Borrowed Bones
Families build you up, tear you down, and sometimes drag you into something truly unhinged. Borrowed Bones unearths the bizarre, toxic, and fascinating stories of family dynamics gone sideways. From the macabre to the just plain strange, we’re digging deep to uncover the skeletons hiding in the closets of history, culture, and beyond.
Borrowed Bones
Shirlee Fields: A Window into Jonestown
Bay City, Michigan native, Shirlee Fields, made her way out west upon graduating high school and eventually found herself in the wilds of Guyana. Hoping and trying for a better future, Shirlee and her family followed Jim Jones into Jonestown and never returned.
We follow Shirlee's story, allowing her to step out of the Jonestown shadow and see Shirlee Fields.
Sources:
Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple.
Cole's MLive series on Shirlee Fields (five parts);
Shirlee's Story: Part 1 , Shirlee's Story: Part 2 , Shirlee's Story: Part 3 ,
Shirlee's Story: Part 4 , Shirlee's Story: Part 5.
E-Mail the show at BorrowedBonesPodcast@proton.me
Hello everyone.
Hello people.
I'm Sarah.
I'm Cole as always,
and you are listening to Borrowed Bones. A family podcast, whether we are related by blood or by bond. We know families can bring us up or tear us down. We all have skeletons from our past, so sit back and listen closely to the history we've borrowed and secrets it holds.
Ooh, today we are recording our first Jonestown installment. Ooh. I'm gonna call them installments because they will be like bottle episodes. Okay. They'll be on their own. There won't be a part one, part two, part three. Yeah. And if you're not familiar with Jonestown, it is, I don't know how you would explain it.
The,
it was a agricultural project started by the group. People's temple, what would be called a cult, or a new religious movement, or a less loaded term [00:01:00] than cult. But yeah, they existed in the sixties, seventies, and Jonestown was their mm-hmm. Agricultural commune in Guyana, south America.
Yeah. So People's Temple, that is the church that is the religious affiliation entity.
Yeah, the
organization. The entity. The organization. Entity.
Jonestown is where they went.
Yeah. It was the physical
town. Town, yeah.
All right. So we have found ourselves in, or, well, Cole has really found himself in, I dunno how else to say it. The Jonestown community.
Yeah, yeah. People's Temple community. The world of researchers and survivors and relatives of.
Of victims and
right
perpetrators and
yeah. You, you talk to people that were there and survived Jonestown. Mm-hmm. You've spoken to people that have family members that have passed away. Yeah. Or were murdered or at Jonestown. Yeah. But the way you got your foot in the door is through your own local [00:02:00] reporting about a woman here in Bay City, Michigan, who moved away when she was 18, made it to the West Coast and found herself a member of the People's Temple and she did die.
Yeah. She died InTown in Jonestown with her
family.
Family of well with her herself included family of four, her husband and her two children.
In this discovery, you were able to speak with quite a few people, including Steven Jones.
Yes. Yeah, he's the son of Jim Jones, the founder of People's Temple.
Yeah.
So while you were Yeah. Unearthing our local person. Yeah. I was trying to
speak with surviving members who had firsthand memories of her, knew her in Jonestown or even before that, and you know, their recollections of her. I was able to connect with Steven Jones, who did recall. Her and her family.
Yeah.
Yeah. That was very interesting. He has firsthand accounts. Mm-hmm. And [00:03:00] then you also spoke with the leading authorities of Jonestown. Yes. When doing your research.
Yes. Rebecca Moore in Fielding m McGee, husband and wife duo who run the Jonestown Institute and the associated website alternative considerations of Jonestown People's Temple.
It's kind of a treasure trove of firsthand documents and accounts of it's, it's, it's the ground zero for everything. People's Temple in Jonestown.
Wow. We will definitely link that in our show notes. Yes. Or anyone who wants to do a very deep dive into people's Temple Jonestown individual stories. Yeah.
Yeah. It's staggering the amount of resources available on that website.
And we have captured a couple different stories from different perspectives as well, and I just wanted to approach each. Jonestown story in a personal way and tell each person's story from their perspective. Let them be the main character individuals and [00:04:00] not Jim Jones,
not the institution as a whole.
Yeah, yeah. There's 900 plus people who died, but you lose the individuality with numbers. The big numbers. Yeah. The psychic numbing of, you know, if close to a thousand people died, it gets less attention than if two people died in a weird way.
Exactly. Yeah,
that's true. That's, that's what we do to process.
But as the group, the name Jonestown has taken over the group identity, and so they're all just lumped into one in this
public consciousness. Right? Yeah.
And this story here is about Shirley Fields. From Bay City, Michigans Shirley.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Now, Shirley Fields was a small town woman who found herself in the midst of a national and historical tragedy.
Mm-hmm. You and I are from Bay City. Yes. So this is a very personal story for us. Yeah. We were able to see certain buildings that are from Shirley's time. Yeah. You got to [00:05:00] speak with people that she knew as well. Yes.
Some former grade school classmates who are still alive. Mm-hmm. In Bay City. Mm-hmm.
Now, how did you discover the connection?
No one was aware from Bay City or people in the People's Temple Jonestown community. They weren't aware that Shirley Fields. Was from Bay City.
Yeah,
yeah. And
people from Bay City weren't aware that Shirley Fields died in Jonestown,
correct? Yeah. I spoke with some her old grade school friends who didn't even know if she was dead for certain, let alone that she died at such a historic incident.
So how did. Shirley Fields cross your radar?
Well, I've always been, as you know, into People's Temple in Jonestown, just had a healthy curiosity in researching it. And I was on the aforementioned website one day a few years ago. Mm-hmm. And it features a list of all nine and hundred and 18 people who died on that day, [00:06:00] November 18th, 1978.
And the list features their hometown. So I just did a word search outta curiosity to see if there was any Michigan natives, and there were several, and there was one from Bay City, Michigan, and I saw it was Shirley Fields.
Oh, so Mack and Rebecca knew, yes, it was that Shirley Fields was from Bay City, Michigan.
It just hadn't gotten back to us yet. To the Bay
City. Yeah.
Okay. That makes sense.
Yeah, that makes, yeah, yeah. Like the people in, people simple knew she was from Bay City, but they didn't know what Bay City. It wasn't, you know? Yeah. She's from some small town in Michigan. Who cares.
Exactly.
But yeah. We're never got back to, to Bay City, Michigan that she had joined People's Temple.
Yeah. I would like to do a quick overview of Jonestown and Jim Jones. This will not be a deep dive Yeah. Into Jonestown. We will learn a lot through Shirley's story and through her family story. However, just to get an idea of what we're working with here, if you've not heard about it, Jim Jones was a leader.[00:07:00]
Jones was from Indiana.
Mm-hmm. And he married Midwest guy.
Yep. Midwest guy. What's the name of his wife's
Marceline?
His wife's name, sorry. Yeah. Marceline. Okay. So he married Marceline and he had a child, Steven.
Mm-hmm.
Eventually they would adopt,
they adopted several kids. Steven was his only biological son with Marceline.
They adopted several sons and daughters, different races to.
The Rainbow family. Yeah. That's
what he tried to, that's what he marketed it as was Right. This trendsetting 1950s adopting children from various ethnic backgrounds.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And as his congregation grew, he eventually had enough of a following, started his own church, calling it People's Temple.
When was People's Temple founded? Is that in the fifties? I
believe it was the late fifties. It changed names for a little bit [00:08:00] when it first started, and it kind of started under the wing of another established church until it broke off onto its own thing. But, uh, I don't quote me on the, well as we're being recorded, but late fifties it became its own.
Yeah. People's Temple began with like a Christian base of ideas. It was kind of the whole, it was Hod Hodge.
He took, Jones, had studied religion as a youth and kind of. Picked and chose the elements he liked from different Christian denominations and kinda put 'em in a melting pot. So it appealed to everyone.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. But the main focus was on social justice and equality, and I believe Mack was the one that said this. If Jim Jones stayed in Indiana, he would most likely have been known as a great civil rights leader of the Midwest.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had he? Yeah. Not done. We did. Yeah. And stayed where? Stayed put and mm-hmm.
Kept challenging people's ideas of sleep well enough alone race leave well enough alone. Yeah.
[00:09:00] Jim then took his congregation and his family to California. Do you know why he went to California?
He claimed that he had a vision of a nuclear holocaust that was imminent, and he had read a magazine, I can't remember which one it was, but there was a magazine that had an article of like the 10 or 12 ideal places in the globe to withstand nuclear fallout, and he selected one of those locations was in California.
Oh. So he told his flock, the end's coming, we gotta move. Oh. And then when the end didn't come, they kind of just forgot about that. Forgot about,
oh, they really thought there was like an end time coming.
Yeah. Or at least that's what he
Well, that's what he said. Yeah. Okay.
Obviously that came and went without,
I didn't realize how early on he started with that Doomsday talk.
Mm-hmm. Hmm. Well. As time went on, people's Temple kind of lost sight of its original goal. It started dropping some of the Christian [00:10:00] values and started picking up some Eastern religion ideas.
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. The main concern was all the social real world. Yeah. The, what did he call it? Pen, not Pentecostal or ecumenical Evangelical socialism.
Oh, hmm.
Eventually though he started to compare himself to God and making his flock completely devoted to him.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. There was a lot of paranoia when the authorities began to move in due to some reports of abuse and physical punishments from the people's temple that started in California, right?
Yes. Yeah. And so there was publications coming out, questioning the inner workings of the church. What are they doing? Are they skimming funds? Are they abusing members? You. Okay. You can members leave of their own volition if they want, that kind of thing.
Yeah. So all of this started happening in California, and that's something I always forget, is [00:11:00] that he basically wound up his congregation and is by the 19 mid to late 1970s, that's when he's like, we're fleeing to Guyana.
Yes. We're being chased out. Ah, it's the them against us. We're
taking, we're going to the promised land because the militant corrupt government in the US won't let us be and they're coming after us.
Right. And that was exactly what Jim Jones wanted. He wanted to have that full control of everyone. And it wasn't very long before November 18th, 1978 comes about.
Yeah. And Jones leads his congregation to. Mass suicide by drinking a mixture of cyanide, tranquilizers and flavor aid. Yes. An off-brand of Kool-Aid. And this is where we get that phrase.
Yeah, the unfortunate, don't drink the Kool-Aid phrase.
So if you ever hear, don't drink the Kool-Aid. People are referring to [00:12:00] the flavor aid that people were forced to drink.
They did not choose this. Some might have, but yeah, some did. But we'll get into it. But
it's, it's complicated. There's no suicide. It's very complicated. Yeah. It's very individual suicide. Depends on your perspective. Mm-hmm.
You are referencing a whole community of people that were. Lives forever Change.
Yeah. Lives taken, lives stolen and gone. And all you're doing is just flippantly saying, don't drink the Kool-Aid because you're being stupid or something. Yeah. It's a
punchline of a joke.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's So
let's just try not to say that,
remember that 300 plus children died.
Yeah.
Regardless of how you feel about murder suicide.
For the rest, the children were inarguably murdered.
Right? These are real people who wanted to do good in the world, and they were horribly manipulated and murdered, and. Shirley Fields was someone that I wanted to follow her, her life and her family through this time and see how someone could end up [00:13:00] drinking poison willingly.
And she's a good one to focus on. 'cause she's not one that someone a lot of historians have focused on. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause
she's from Bay City.
Me too.
Right. Small Midwest city of around. Oh, 30, 31,000. Yeah. Kind of fluctuates here. There most recent
census, I think it was 30 or 31,000. Yeah.
I like to call it not too big, not too small, kind of just Right.
You know, Goldilocks style. Yeah. You don't literally know everyone, but you are gonna see people you do know when you leave the house. Yeah. Now, who is Shirley and how did she end up in Guyana? All the way from Bay City, Michigan.
All right. So Shirley Fields was born, Shirley Miller in Bay City in 1937. She was the middle of three daughters.
Her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants, and her dad owned a drugstore in Bay City. It was a pharmacist, and the building still stands. Mm. So she and her sisters [00:14:00] went to school? Worked in their dad's shop.
Yeah. The building though. So he had, it was called Miller's Drugstore, right? Yeah. So he was like the local town pharmacist.
Yeah, local
pharmacist. The neighborhood. Right.
And you went and saw that building, right? Yeah. The building
still there. It's unoccupied right now. It's a freestanding one story like business building
and. Shirley's older sister's name is Marilyn. Yes. And her younger sister's name is Dolores. Yes. This building that is still there today that I drive by all the time.
Yeah, drive by every day. So do you It's pretty. I wish someone would do something with it 'cause it's just kind of sitting there empty. But it has the name Marilyn above the door on the top. Yeah, out of the stone. So I think that's really neat. Yeah. It doesn't say Shirley, but it's the firstborn daughter.
Yeah, it's the firstborn. So,
and it's still there. Yeah. I don't know who owns it, but whoever owns it, please do something. You were able to meet up with a couple of Shirley's old classmates and childhood friends, right?
Yes. Two of them.
Ruth and Colleen. Yes. [00:15:00] Great. And I remember when you went to go, I was at home and you were getting ready to leave to go meet with them.
And the photographer, you were, you came home and you were so excited. They were so nice and yeah, they were really astounded by your story of Shirley.
Yeah. One of the weird things I found, I thought this was one of the weirdest, was her high school graduating class did reunions over the years and I found ads in our local newspaper in the nineties and early aughts for them, basically asking for her to contact them for the reunion.
They had like a name of like five or six classmates that couldn't find, found out they couldn't find, and they were asking these five or six to for reunion to do reach out to them with their current addresses or whatever. They had her listed there. Wow. So no one really knew that she died in Guyana.
Yeah.
So what did they say or did? Were you the one that told Ruth and Colleen of Shirley's fate?
Yeah. Yeah. They had no idea. I mean, obviously they [00:16:00] were familiar with Jonestown.
Right.
But it never, and it was weird that, I mean, bay Cities, like you said, you may not know everybody, but when you leave the house, you're gonna run into somebody you do know.
Mm-hmm.
And it's a very small, tight knit families have been here for generations. Yeah. It's shocking to me that no one locally had ever pieced together what happened to her.
Yeah. And I have a few quotes from your article actually. Yeah. I'm gonna be linking, Cole is my source for today, Cole and Mac and Rebecca.
Yeah,
that's pretty much it. But you guys know everything, so it's great. I did see in your article that Ruth had a few quotes and so did Colleen, but. Ruth said, I am absolutely shocked that she would get involved in something like that. It's hard to believe. She came from a very good family, a very strong family.
How do you explain something like that? I still have a hard time thinking how did that happen to her?
Yeah,
man.
[00:17:00] And like you've mentioned, people's Temple was ostensibly a Christian denomination, but Shirley was Jewish. Jewish, yeah. And that shows like she, that People's Temple could. Open its doors to all backgrounds.
You could not be a Christian to join, but you could join for the social outreach, the political causes. Yeah. So to speak.
Yeah. Ruth remembers Shirley was a popular girl and an overall good person along with her entire family. Ruth also said Shirley was just an everyday normal, nice looking girl.
Yeah,
just nothing crazy.
Nothing really stood out too much.
She, I remember they said that they would, you know, they'd visit her dad's. Pharmacy and Yep. That their teachers would often ask Shirley to bring them items from their dad's store school. The teachers would, yeah. Nice. Like, oh, you're working at your dad's store, so tomorrow bring me in something.
And she would do that. So she was kinda known as the pharmacist's daughter.
Nice. And then Colleen also was an [00:18:00] old friend of Shirley's and they went to elementary and high school together. Colleen does say that they weren't super close, but she still remembers that she went to Shirley's birthday party once.
And remember Shirley being a nice, quiet girl that never got into any trouble. Yeah. Yeah. Very Midwest. Very, yeah. Easy peasy. Everyone from Bay City could be described this way. I mean, I'm not quiet, but back then, back in that era, back then, yeah. In the
late thirties, forties.
Now you found a lot of newspaper articles with Shirley and or her family.
Yeah, but they were, they were like little
briefs. It was, it was weird. What made it into the newspaper 70, 80 years ago? Yeah, it was like. Back when
local news was very, very local. Yeah. One was
like, you know, f Shirley Miller 13 returns to Bay City after visiting her aunt for a week in Detroit. That was an article.
Or you know, she's ho, her family's hosting a birthday party for her in [00:19:00] the backyard. Guess singer? In Shirley's singer. Guess her welcome. Yeah. Just like
I saw one, there was an article that you referenced talking about 11-year-old Shirley and her older sister Marilyn, going to the YWCA's camp on Loon Lake up in Iosco County.
It's an hour and a half roughly from Bay City. Yeah. That's like a normal thing. Yeah.
It's very common to go up to Ioco County. Yeah. For the day even and just go swimming in the lake. But that's what they wanna talk about. And so we know quite a bit about Shirley. Yeah. From at least in her early years.
Yeah. For Shirley's 13th birthday in December of 1950, she had her own gala at the Winona Hotel,
which is no longer there.
No longer there. Went down, burned to the ground fire. There's a
planetarium there now.
Yep. For anyone who knows there. That's where the big orange planetarium is now.
Looks like an upside down KFC bucket.
Mm-hmm.
So she graduates high school in Bay City and moves to Colorado for college. Uh, she [00:20:00] was apparently pretty popular in college. I found some photos of her from college publications, her in her dorm and just, you know,
yeah, I saw that she was asked or voted or something to be a pinup girl for the Colorado Engineer Magazine.
Yeah. Yeah. I also saw that she was a part of multiple clubs mm-hmm. While she was in college and the newspaper was really keeping track of her. But how was it keeping track of her when she left? Did her parents' give the newspaper information? Or how, how does that happen to
have, I'm guessing the era of like their parents.
To kinda have bragging rights amongst their peers Yeah. Who are reading the paper. So the local papers would report, you know, so and so is freshman year of college and what they're studying just to kinda, because like it's your neighbors who are reading it. So it's kind of the parents to brag about without
bragging.
Yeah. It's, and then I also saw that there was another [00:21:00] paper saying that in July of 1962, Shirley was the maid of honor at her younger sister's wedding in la. Yes. So it sounds like, I don't know where Marilyn is at this time, but it sounds like a few of them are moving out west at this point. Mm-hmm. And I also saw that her parents sold the drugstore as well.
Yeah. And moved to Phoenix, Arizona.
Yep. I think that's just a classic retirement kind of thing. And it seems that, I think so all their basic city ties kind of ended around them. Yeah.
Now, jumping ahead.
Okay.
Shirley is now 25. And we see again in the newspaper that she marries Donald J. Fields on August 11th, 1963 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in California.
Yes.
And you did a great job of finding this photo. It's
black and white of, it's her wedding day photo, right? Yeah, it's
her wedding day. Her wedding dress is really cool looking. It's very classic of the time. It's a white lace with the long sleeves, and then she has a beautiful, nice veil with a [00:22:00] pearl tiara.
I remember the, the base three times archives, like described her dress in like detail.
Yeah.
And again, oh,
they described her veil as like a bouffant.
Yeah. And it's, again, it's weird because she didn't live here.
No.
And her, I don't think her parents did by that point either. But yet I don't
think so.
The, the, the hometown paper of where she grew up reports on somebody, a former resident now getting married three times zones away.
Yeah. That wouldn't have
happen today. I'm not reporting on someone. And
it was like a month later too. Yeah. That it was published. Yeah. Like, I don't,
again, I think that's just like bragging rights back home. Like her parents paid to show people. Yeah. '
cause no one's home anymore. Yeah. The fields were never there.
Or the Millers, sorry. Yeah. The Millers are not in Bay City anymore. Yeah.
And anybody that really cared, they would've invited. Yeah. Or would've at least been told Yeah. Before you, you know, you're not gonna read it a month later if in the newspaper, if you were really invested in the family.
Donald Fields was 31 years old when he married Shirley.
He is [00:23:00] from Buffalo, New York, and he served in the US Army. He also worked as a pharmacist.
Yeah,
just like her dad. Mm-hmm. Now, Shirley had a few jobs after college. She was a pharmacist assistant. That's hard to say. Pharmacist
assistant.
Pharmacist assistant. Was she Donald's?
I don't know.
We dunno. Okay. And she was also a hospital dietician, a medical secretary and a nutritionist.
Yes. She was pretty dynamic. She was pretty diverse. Yeah. Don and Shirley had two kids, Lori and Mark born in 1965. And Mark was born in 1967.
Okay. Yeah, that's right. I always forget which one was the older of the two. Lori. Yeah. Lori was older. Yeah.
Oh, when you. I have a few of her things that she wrote. Oh yeah.
Lori's, she's intense. Yeah. That girl. Holy shit.
Yeah. She wrote some scary things. Yeah. With Jonestown. Yep.
Now Don and Shirley, they shared a passion for social equality [00:24:00] and eradicating injustices. And Shirley, she just had that pure hope for the future. They were in the thick of the civil rights movement, so they were really looking for change.
She had a hope for the future, but a fear of it as well. Yes. Of what it could turn out to be.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. And I know she'd be terrified if she saw what we're living in today.
She's probably happy that she's dead. Where was I? Oh yeah. Two kids. Yeah,
they were the civil rights movement. Yeah.
Oh yeah.
They're social progressives. Liberals, yeah.
Oh, Shirley. Shirley was easily attracted to the charisma of Jim Jones who was preaching everything she wanted to hear. Yeah. You know, he's got everything you you need. You want social justice. I got you. You want equality. I got you. You wanna end racism. I got you.
You want no more world hunger. Got you. Yeah. Poverty gone.
All the isms. He's got all the isms. Racism, ageism, sexism. Yeah. It's all,
he's got it. Yeah. That should be your first red flag. No one can tackle all of that. Yeah. But as a church and as a religion, I get it. You, you have a whole, you're gonna [00:25:00] join
something better.
Join a group that, at least my thinking would be like you're concerned with benefiting. Yeah. This world and not a hypothetical next fantasy world. That,
and I think Jones, being from the Midwest probably helped Shirley feel secure in it. 'cause I know, I feel, no offense to big city people, but like. I like when I find another mid-westerner when I'm in a big city.
Yeah. He was good at being able to, his followers could project what they wanted out of a leader. Mm-hmm.
Now, like I said earlier, up top, Jim Jones did begin moving his congregation to Guyana, which would then be Jonestown. Yes. The little town in Guyana,
they built it from scratch in the middle of the jungle.
It was not an established town before they got there. Yeah, they made it. But
the first crew went in what, 1974?
Yeah, I think December of 73 or early 74 was when the first cruise went to start. Inspecting the land, chopping down trees and Okay. [00:26:00] Making way for a community.
But Shirley and her family, they did not move to Guyana until July of 1977?
Correct. And that was the month after Jones himself got there. Pretty much. In the summer of 77, there was a exodus to get people's temple members out of the states.
Oh, into
Guyana.
Why was there an exodus?
Basically the, some prying eyes were starting to look at the organization. Some journalists had written articles that were published looking into or asking questions about what's really going on.
Former members had left and were speaking out about the abuse that they had endured or witnessed. So Jones is feeling the heat and he. You persecution complex. We gotta get out while it getting good before the, the dragnet closes in on me
and he's taking everyone with him. Let's go. And he could point to
them and saying, they're coming after me, so they're gonna come after you.
You know, we've heard that If it can happen to me, it can happen to you.
[00:27:00] No, it can't Not if you don't do it, I'm
not doing the shit that I'm not doing what you're
doing, so they're not gonna come after me.
Yeah.
Anyway. When Shirley and her family moved in July of 77, they would only last just over a year.
Mm-hmm. Before Shirley and her entire family would die in Jonestown, along with 900 others.
Yeah.
So how did Shirley and her family get caught up in this deadly religion? We kind of touched on it a little bit.
It's not really, I wasn't able to definitively state how or when they met, they met.
That's what I wanted to know.
I'm, yeah, I couldn't find it.
I'm guessing that maybe around 19 74, 75 seems to have been the time that they, the Fields family met or encountered People's Temple, whether it was, they just popped in for a service. 'cause there was a lot, I mean, they had services throughout the country and, you know mm-hmm.
Do these Greyhound bust tours. They had major churches in San Francisco, in [00:28:00] la
Yeah.
So it, it conceivably, they just probably popped in word of mouth or, you know, maybe they had a mutual friend who suggested it to them.
Yeah.
But it does seem, by all accounts, that surely between her and her husband, she was the.
More headstrong, the leader. Okay. Between the two of them, he kind of took a backseat to Shirley's. Drive.
Yeah.
Don was the more passive,
supportive, passive like. Yep, that's fine. Yeah. I mean, he still agreed he wanted those morals and those isms to be taken care of as well.
Yeah. But it seems that, uh, she was the force
behind it all.
Yeah.
Now, while the Fields's family lived in California, I did see that you found this. It's weird that I'm like telling you what you found. Yeah. But yeah, it's been a
few months. Well, you wrote it like a year ago. Yeah. It's been over a year, so I could use a little refresher that I'm getting right now.
The Fields family befriended the Harrison family.
Yes. While they were in California, right before they became a part of the People's Temple.
Yes.
The [00:29:00] Harrison family also had kids around Mark and Lori's age, and they also went to school together. So this is like a perfect little family friendship. Yeah. Now, Bob Harrison was interviewed in 2000, in 2013, so this is where I'm pulling these quotes from.
Okay. And I think he has since passed away. Yes.
He, okay. Quick correction. He wasn't interviewed. He wrote a remembrance of the Fields family. He wrote. Okay. Yeah, just an essay, kind of just his recollections of them.
So Bob Harrison, he said that Shirley was the outgoing one with a quick and active imagination, and he also said that his family enjoyed their company.
They were intelligent and interesting and just fun to be around. He did mention though, that Shirley could be pessimistic about the state of the world and social ills. Like you said, she was hopeful for the future, but also fearful for it. So that fear really helps with that cult mindset. Yeah. Harrison went on to say that our [00:30:00] failure as a society to end poverty and racial injustice rankled her.
Shirley was searching for spiritual truth and in this search it led her to Jim Jones and the People's Temple. Yeah. And I think that's very natural. I think that if I were alive at that time, especially if he caught me in the sixties, I would've joined. Yeah. I think I would've, I would've been like, this is great.
I love a rainbow family. Let's go.
I don't know. Yeah. All of his causes that he proselytized to the public anyway. Yeah. They're all the most worthwhile causes to support and that's the seductiveness of, compared to some other groups that are clearly destructive, that Right. Only have destruction from their outset or you know, self-defeating purposes.
This started good appealing to people's better angels. Yeah. Their worst demons.
Right. It sounded really good. Now, Harrison also recalls that Shirley wanted to have her family get all of their passports because she really was worried about Jewish persecution in America.
Yeah. And that becomes like chicken and [00:31:00] eggs.
Like did she? Did her paranoia of persecution lead her to Jones? Right. Or did Jones stoke up exactly. The paranoia put the paranoia in her as he did with all of his, you know, fear monitoring. Yeah. Of they're coming any day they're gonna put us in concentration camps. I mean, he was only a few years, well, a few decades behind the time or ahead of the time.
He was just right between Yeah. When America doesn't have concentration camps.
Exactly. Yeah.
It's like you missed your window Jones. Yeah. The camps, the Japanese camps were gone and the future camps aren't a few decades. Not, not, yeah. They're here now.
We have one. Yeah. Being built in our state. Yeah. Anyway, now as time went on a little bit, the Field's family, they saw the Harrisons less and less, and the Field's family began taking bus rides on the weekends to San Francisco for meetings like you had said.
Yeah.
Now, Bob Harrison. He remembers one time he asked them or asked [00:32:00] Shirley about people's temple and she just wasn't very open about it. But the only thing that she would say was the members were very diverse and from a wide range of ages, ethnic backgrounds, cultures, educational levels, and economic groups, and that they all prayed and wanted to end poverty and social injustice.
She's right, that's a, she's right. That's an apt description of Yeah. What the parishioners believed.
Yep. And then in the winter of 1976, the Fields family moved to San Francisco.
One could infer its Jones consolidating his flock, getting them
closer, closer to they sold as much as they could. Mm-hmm. And they gave away everything else stating that all of the money was going to People's Temple and that they would live in housing that the group provided.
Yep. That was Common Jones stressed, communal living breakdown of the nuclear family unit.
Why would he wanna break that down? '
cause then he has more control freedom. If you break down the archetype [00:33:00] units that already exists, the family, the,
is it because the man is like the head of the household? And if you don't have that set up household, then Jim Jones can come in and be the dominant one in any sort of aspect.
I think
that's part of it. And just his wanting to like just keep individuals isolated. Ah, you can't. Collaborate with others, you're more realize to realize this is kind of screwed up or this Yeah, if, if you are, if everyone's paranoid of everybody else, 'cause you're all separated, right? You and I might talk and be like, Hey, I don't know about this Jones guy anymore.
What do you think? Well, you're not gonna say that if the guy you're talking to might be diehard loyalist and is gonna go to Jones and be like, yeah. And you
don't know
Shirley's talking shit about you. Yeah. Yeah. So you just divide the family. Yeah. You've all lived together and communal housings. Yeah.
They sold their homes, properties, cars, and would sign over everything to the organization.
After the Fields family moved, the [00:34:00] Harrisons did meet up with them a few more times, but it very quickly kind of
got sporadic, faded out.
Whenever the Harrisons would talk or ask about the People's temple, the Fields's family, they, they would clam up and apparently they were instructed to not.
Really talk much about it to outsiders.
Yeah.
When the Harrisons heard of the news of the Jonestown Massacre and the 918 lives that were lost, they knew the Fields family was among the slain. Yeah. Both the husband and wife, the Harrisons husband and wife, they dealt with the news differently and I found it interesting because I think there's a lot of parallels today in how people are handling things.
Bob Harrison, he found the news sad. He was a little bit more compassionate about it. Whereas he remembers his wife being angry with them, wondering and asking why they would take their kids to their doom. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's,
I get that.
Yeah. Being angry for like, I don't give a shit we do to yourself.
Killing. You have
[00:35:00] autonomy to take your own life, that's fine. But like don't do it to the kids.
Yeah.
Leave them alone. They did nothing. Yeah, they did nothing.
Jones would tell us flock, especially once they were isolated in Jonestown that. When the government came, they would take their kids and yeah.
Torture them or turn them into, you know, ugly brainwashed capitalists. Mm-hmm. A lot of the parents might have thought in that moment. I. It's more merciful to kill my kid than to have them tortured by the government in a concentration camp for the rest of their life. I mean, not justifying it, but I'm saying this is go to their, that their psyche, their mindset, psych.
You gotta put yourself in their shoes and see things through their eyes and think to
yourself like, I know, okay. When you hear things of people saying, I'm scared to send my child to school, to public school because they might come back a different gender. You're, you're, you are telling me that you are actively sending your child, your [00:36:00] flesh and blood to a school and you truly, truly in your heart think that they could have a forced operation on them.
If you truly think that you are a bad parent for taking your child to that school, they should take, you should take your kid out, start homeschooling, quit your job, change your whole goddamn life if you really feel this way. I'm sorry.
They don't believe it. They don't
Exactly. That's what I'm getting at.
Yeah. If you feel this way, you're gonna act this way. And at least the people, a part of people's Temple had integrity. Yeah. God damnit. They had integrity if nothing else. That's my soapbox. I'm done. Okay. Now I really was interested to see who Shirley and Don were when they were at Jonestown. Yes.
What were their roles and what, what did they do? Do you wanna speak on that at all?
Yeah, so Don had a, had a very coveted position as a pharmacist.
Do you know why it was coveted? Just 'cause it's a good position. I actually coveted,
it's a important, he, I mean he, he was the only [00:37:00] pharmacist there.
Oh, yeah.
Important.
And it's important to note that the town as it was set up, had like, like a real town had, you know, a doctor's office, print shop, all, all different little facilities, and he had his own pharmacist. Building with his name on it. Shirley managed, or was the overseer of the herbal gardens that they grew there, at least for part of the time.
Mm-hmm.
I know she shared some interest in joining education to help teach students for a time, but I don't think that ever came to be. She was just interested in it, but yeah, she was in charge of the herbal gardens and there's even some audio recordings of her speaking.
Yeah, yeah. She had multiple roles.
I think I saw here that she was also a nutritionist. I did see that when you spoke to Steven Jones, he knew the Fields family. He said that Shirley seemed to have a good spirit about her. Her [00:38:00] children were sweet, lovely kids. They enjoyed being a part of the very diverse group of children that was had there.
Mm-hmm.
I did find it quite interesting that Steven decided to continue after a happy quote and a happy thought and said, that doesn't mean it's a happy place.
Yeah. John Stone was not
Yeah.
Happy
Steven. He hits different than the others. Yeah. And I think it's 'cause he saw parts of his dad that no one else saw.
Mm-hmm. And I think he always knew what was happening behind the curtain. He knew, even if he didn't know. 'cause he was like a teenager, right? Yeah. I
think he was 21 when it all went. Went down. Okay. Late 2021. Anyway,
early, very young, very young man for this to happen
too. Or around. And yeah, he, as he told me, he saw the darker side of his dad early on when he was a child.
Mm-hmm. And that never left. So he and his dad had a. [00:39:00] Contentious relationship at the best of times I would say his dad
was like cheating and running around about his wife and all. He was never faithful. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And Steven saw all of that.
Yeah.
Steven did go on to say that Don was also a sweet person and that Don just kind of kept to himself and tried to be of service in any way he could.
And he said that Shirley was the more strident one, the one that was more involved out of the two. But Don was a devoted husband and that they both were progressive thinkers.
Yeah.
They just wanted justice equality. They just wanted simple living. Yeah. Now you were mentioning a little recording of Shirley.
I do have a little bit of that recording. You wanna listen to it so it's a little hard to hear 'cause it's very, from the seventies, you know, a lot of noise in the background. But you'll hear Shirley talking to Jim and she'll refer to him as dad.
Which was common. His followers would call him dad, father.
Some variation thereof. The [00:40:00] recording was, they kept meticulous audio recordings. Yeah. In Jonestown every, like, they would have daily nightly meetings multiple times a day, multiple times a week, and they recorded it all. And so we have archived all of these records.
They really thought they were doing something to leave behind for others to learn from.
Yeah. They really felt like they were doing a service to the world.
Mm-hmm.
It's nice to hear the recording because you can hear her like her Michigan Midwest base city accent.
Yeah, because I first heard it, you can just hear it. It, it was on again, the website. Oh, wait, we didn't know
it was her, did we?
Right. I found a recording of. You know, them doing the, so there was different, uh, uh, committees, I guess you would say in Jonestown, responsible for, you know, there's the livestock committee or here's the, the crops, you know, different tasks. So she was in charge of growing the herbs. So they would have these, you know, [00:41:00] nightly committee reports to, you know, they'd read to Jones, you know, what, what'd you do today?
Or What's the update on your, your field? And so there was a recording of a woman giving this update on herbal gardens, wasn't identified who the woman was, but through piecing together who would be the one giving this kind of update. And I played it for you. Yeah, I remember that. It was like, you not being from Michigan originally, I'm like, what does this sound like to you?
Mm-hmm. And you're like, it sounds like a Midwestern accent. Accent, accent.
Yeah.
And there was only, I think, eight or nine Shirleys in Jonestown, only one from Midwest, only one who worked in herbal gardens. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And
quacks like a duck, probably a duck. So,
and that's been updated. Is that in Mac and Rebecca's website as well?
Yes, it's been updated, but it now
does identify her. Wow. And you helped with that? Yeah, I helped with that, yeah. You did?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
So we identified audio [00:42:00] recording of Shirley Fields' voice, gosh, had been unidentified for 45 years.
Now again, in the recording, you'll hear Shirley refer to Jim as Dad, and you can still hear her accent now.
She also, in the recording, she mentions finding a medicinal plant that can aid in a longer life. Shirley is, has a lighthearted tone when saying this, and Jones replies with Burn it.
Yes.
And so I'm gonna play that little clip for you guys. Hopefully it works. If it doesn't, well then you didn't hear a clip.
Let's go, let's go. Herbal garden.
Excuse me. Dead. Uh, we found something called Go to Cola, which is, uh, the herb for, to preserve a long life and, um, if burn it. Yeah. Right.
And that was Shirley Fields telling Jim Jones about the [00:43:00] medicinal plant. And you can hear how he says, burn it. And they all applaud.
Yeah. And they laugh and she goes, yeah. Right. Like she knows they've already discussed, you know, like it's, yeah. Yeah. And even they, this was months before. Everything fell apart.
So it's already on their minds that they're talking about it. Yeah. And they have like a flippant like, 'cause then he goes on, he's like, I'm just joking. Anyway, what's the report? And
yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very flippant the way he throws death around so casually to get people to not believe him.
Yeah. And they laugh and then they start clapping and it's just,
it's every day they are bombarded with these kinds of things.
There's speakers going on at all times with Jim Jones's voice saying things, there's recordings always happening. So you have to know that it's co the mind, there's a huge, constantly constant information is being thrown at them. It's just constant. So it's making them not even think of one thing.
Yeah.
What's the phrase that what Steve Bannon used? Flood. The flood the system or whatever. Yeah. You just, I'm getting it slightly wrong, but basically you [00:44:00] just bombed. You gotta look it up
now. Alright.
Yeah. Flood the zone.
Flood the zone. Yes. Basically
you just keep people. Confused and befuddled by not, not giving them a chance.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's not a new tactic.
It's been around, it's bombarded with information that they can't get their feet.
Mm-hmm. On the ground. Mm-hmm. And now as the, like you said, the recording continues. It's a little long. Yeah. It's quite a, all the recordings are pretty long. Yeah. And there's a woman that comes on and criticizes Shirley for some reason.
I couldn't really hear why, that's why I'm not gonna play. It's a really grainy part of it. It just sounds like noise. But he criticizes a woman for criticizing Shirley, or he chastises a woman for criticizing Shirley. Yeah. And he says never criticize management in front of others. You can say anything to me privately, but you will not do it in front of the public.
I'm making a point. God damnit. And it better be heard. Shirley was in charge.
Yeah.
And he says Shirley was in charge. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:45:00] Hierarchy was very important to Jones in all roads led back to him. Mm-hmm. But he's gotta have his. Tiered levels. Yeah.
And much like the families. You had mentioned earlier when the Fields family arrived in Jonestown, they were split up.
Yes.
Shirley was assigned to dorm number two. Donald lived in cottage 52. Mark was in cottage 21 and Lori was assigned to cottage 17.
Yes. So even the siblings were separated.
Yeah. I was surprised by that. But that makes sense though. The kids are probably the ones most likely to rebel.
Mm-hmm.
Because they didn't choose to come, and they're the most impressionable
you can get them to believe in.
You can weed out any doubts early on with kids. That's true
too. Yeah. If you get them isolated, yeah. You can mold them, you can make
them die hard. They don't think the question the same way an adult would of like, they just accept what they're told they're kids.
Mm-hmm. Now, for a little more insight into the Field's family, there was one resident [00:46:00] who journaled and they, Edith Rower and she journaled a lot and constantly, she mentioned Shirley and her family a few times.
One journal entry she wrote said, Shirley requested a separation from her husband Don, claiming he was trying to dominate her.
Mm-hmm.
That's all that says. Dunno what that means. Doesn't
Yeah. They were living separately already. Yeah. I don't understand. And, and she again, weirdly with their hierarchy, she, it was on Jones to either approve or disapprove a marriage separation.
Yeah.
In that world.
And then another. Journal entry was of a time when Shirley was in a group session, and this is when they would talk about self criticisms. They would confess their sins for community betterment.
Yeah. They were expected to look inward and say all the awful things you did, whether you did 'em or not you, you would [00:47:00] incriminate yourself on things that, you know, you might say you molested a child.
Oh, or you've killed someone. All kinds of things that do they punish you. Uh,
and that's why it's better for the community.
They wouldn't necessarily punish everyone at that. It's kind of, I guess, Scientology, like where they, you know, just wanna have dirt on you.
Okay. And I see like
blackmail material maybe, kind of thing.
Yeah. Well, Shirley's confession. Was that she said, and it, it seems like, who, who was it again that has the journal? Edith.
Edith Roller Rawer.
She has a good memory, or she's making up quotes, but here's a quote from Shirley from the journal entry. Okay. I have set myself up higher Oh yeah. Than those around me and acted like I was special, but really I am much lower.
I have not cared about my children except in relation to myself. I have something inside that needs to come out. A feeling of love. And then Shirley went on to [00:48:00] admit that she was treating her husband poorly and that she has actually assaulted him out of anger before. Mm. So,
yeah,
it's a very interesting situation there.
There's also audio recordings of Jim Jones talking about Don and praising his work in the pharmacy saying he's doing exceptional job there.
In another writing, Shirley mentions that Don had gotten off the learning crew, which, oh, a learning crew was kind of the punishment in Jonestown for minor infractions.
That was the most physical labor. Like you go to the fields, you do the jobs, nobody else wants to do that need to be done. Oh. Doesn't say what he did, but somehow he pissed off Jones at some point to get that kind of punishment.
Dang. Alright. I didn't see that. That's interesting. Yeah. Actually
I don't think I found that out till, 'cause after my articles were published, I kept.
Do it in Jonestown Research, and I found some things that she wrote afterwards, [00:49:00] after my article was published. Oh,
okay.
Yeah,
this one really stood out to me. There were also some letters that were found at one point Jones had his members write down what they would do if there was a final White Night
and a White Knight.
Was their drill for like emergency situations like gorillas or gis or like
animal gorillas or, or people, no,
G-U-E-R-G-E. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that, you know, the worst case scenario, the troops are coming in, they're paratroopers, so we got a plan, you know, DEFCON eight, you know, that kind of thing. That's a white knight.
And often they would end with. Fake suicide drills.
The white night drills, they were semi common, right?
They got, or they got increasingly more common? Yeah. There was one that lasted essentially six days. It was called the Six Day Siege, where everyone was put on alert and no one was allowed to sleep. And they were told that there was [00:50:00] enemies surrounding the town in the jungle, and as soon as they went, let their guards down, they'd be massacred.
So were they taken from their dorms and cottages and put into a common area or like, like what? Describe a white knight to me.
Yeah. So kind of the central building, I guess you would say in Jonestown was this large pavilion. Mm-hmm. So no walls but a ceiling. And that was kinda like the, the town square.
Okay. I guess you would call it. So during these white nights, Jones would call everyone. To the pavilion. Everybody who was able-bodied kind of get 'em all in one spot, huddle together and yeah, say that the enemies are at the gates and we gotta decide are we gonna fight against them or are we going to take poison ourselves so they don't capture us.
And did he have them drink like they, they did drink juice or something. And so they've been prepped basically to drink something and not die like they've been told. He started
[00:51:00] that even by some accounts, he did that at least once in California, really? With his, like the upper echelon. And told him like they, they drank some wine, which was uncommon.
And then after they drank it, he told them, you're gonna die. It's all poison and you're gonna die. Die. And they waited around for like an hour and then they just didn't die, obviously. Yeah. So he, you know, piecemeal a little bit at a time, dipping his toes of getting them used to suicide death.
Yeah,
I mean, I don't know what it's like to.
I can't imagine what it'd be like to drink something you fully believe is poison.
Right.
And then not die.
Right. Wouldn't you be mad?
A lot of 'em were, but they like, I'd be
angry and that would cause me to leave, I would think. But I'm not there. I don't know. I, I can speculate, but you don't know until you're there, father, you just don't,
father's will spared you.
Yeah. Yeah. You have to fight
another day. Isn't this a miracle that the poison didn't kill you? Right.
Well, for this prompt, [00:52:00] what they would do on the final White night, Shirley, Don and Lori all wrote a response. Shirley wrote, I would like to help eradicate hunger throughout the world and preserve a communistic life for children.
And that is what I would fight for. If I were to die tomorrow, I would have no regrets. Yeah, pretty much what you would expect. Don said that he would like to work in healthcare and in other countries, but he would fight for what he knows is right. Especially for all the children here and in the world.
Pretty boilerplate.
Yeah. Pretty standard. Yeah. Like whatever you need me to say, I'll say, and mind you, they're writing these down knowing that Jim Jones is going to read them. Yeah. They know what they're supposed to say. They're
writing they, they're writing for the answer.
Yes. They
know that there's a right and a wrong answer, even though it's What do you think you would do?
Yeah.
Well, I would, there's one
answer to what you would do. You better get it correct.
The most interesting or disturbing letter was from [00:53:00] Lori.
Mm-hmm.
I think she was all in. She's 12.
She's 12. It's easy to be all in. Yeah. I mean, yeah.
She said, or she wrote. I would have someone drop me in the middle of California in an airplane in the night.
I would write notes to former members. The note would say, to meet me in a certain place, a certain time, I could set a bomb to the place and blow them up. And me too, I could disguise myself as a dentist. Then I could drill in one of the traitor's teeth and put in a beeper device. Okay, so there's a few things to unpack there that's pretty
elaborate for a 12-year-old to plot how to kill some, how to assassinate, right?
Essentially.
So the former members, people that maybe decided they didn't wanna go to Guyana, and that was their breaking point, and they're broke from people's Temple, or they broke before that because they saw the abuses happening, the punishments, you know, some people do see the horizon ahead of them.
Everyone's got a story of why they left quit when they did.
Now, the former members that did [00:54:00] not go to Guyana. Were they considered evil, bad? Like what's the deal with Lori wanting to kill them?
There was no bigger enemy in Jones' mind than a former member who defected. They were traitors. They were instantly put on, like he would harangue them at sermons.
Oh. To current members. He would, you know, put death threats against these people. Wow. Yeah. If you went against him, you were good as dead in his eyes. And yeah. So that's why the children were taught to hate former members.
Oh wow. That's crazy. And then the beeper device, do we know what she's talking about there?
I think she's
just
being a kid.
Specula. Yeah. Like I'll put a bomb in their mouth and trying to figure out what to do. Yeah. Okay. Just,
I mean, that's a very 12-year-old answer kind of, you know, she's trying to be angry. I'll parachute in
and, I mean, probably trying to impress, you know, you wanna be a 12-year-old, you wanna be the top of your class.
So, yeah.
So Lori was just ready to [00:55:00] go all out. Now, oh, as all of this is going on there, there are still people back in the states that know Don, that know Shirley. Mm-hmm. That know other people in the Jonestown community and they're getting a little worried. Don's mom, she was trying to get in contact with Don in May of 1978.
Don's mom called the US State Department and wanted to know what was going on. She believed that he and his family were being held at Jonestown against their will, and she just wanted a check-in. That's all she was asking for. The State Department forwarded the request to Georgetown, which is the capital of Guyana.
Mm-hmm. And they asked someone to check on the Fields family. Eventually, a US console arrived on November 7th, 1978,
just a few days before things go sideways.
Right. Just a what, A 10 [00:56:00] or 11 days? Yeah. Yeah. But. I just wanna note here that Don's mom started this process in May, and no one actually checked until November.
So this is what Things move slow. They move slow, but also, I don't think the American government cared that much, correct me. Well, yeah, tell me. Well, there was
a gr, I mean, Don's mom wasn't officially part of this group, but there was like an organized group called the Concerned Relatives. Of former members or relatives of members that were still there who were actively like petitioning the government, the, the media, just anyone who would listen to something's going on here,
we need help.
We need
help. Yeah.
And
so there was like the organized group of concerned relatives. Okay. And then there was still just individuals who were Return. Yeah. Return.
Do you think the government at that time was taking it as seriously as the family members were?
No,
I don't think so. I don't think, given what I've read, yeah, you've spoken to more people and done deeper research, but from what I've seen, [00:57:00] I think they kind of wanted it just to go away.
Yeah. And when it moved to Guyana, they said, oh. It's gone now.
Yeah. I think that, I mean, a lot of the relatives, when the government would check on people, they all said, I'm fine. I'm here of my own volition.
That's true too. Right? Because someone did visit him and he did say, I'm well and happy. You can't take a full grown adult.
Yeah. It's not alleging that a minor was kidnapped.
It's just odd that the government took months to Yeah. Check on him. Plus, that's all I'm saying.
I mean, Guyana is isolated country in the, to begin with. It's, yeah. It's hard to really put into perspective how isolated a compound Jonestown itself was.
Yeah.
The nearest town and
the town
was what, six miles?
Yeah. And you had to fly in or take a boat
all surrounded by dense forest jungle.
Yeah. Like
predators are in there, like you're not
Yeah. This isn't, you're not running away. Yeah. You could yeah, run into a, a jaguar, you could
run [00:58:00] into
a snake could get it bit by a poisonous, bare, venomous bug.
You. You know, trip on a twig, break your ankle and just die there and,
yep.
Yeah. And the only communication was via radio.
Yeah. They were so completely isolated. And then to add the fear, paranoia, the exhaustion, the hunger. Yeah. Because they were hungry.
They're working,
they're working. And constantly, constantly, yeah.
Things were just overall deteriorating. Yeah. And the town
was essentially, it could sustain about a 500 people population is the estimate, which it did for several years. But then when the, the Exodus brought. As many people's temple members as possible. There in one fell swoop, you basically had a thousand people living in a town that previously had four to 500.
Jim.
I mean, he had complete control of everyone, but he was not in good health himself. He was,
yeah.
I don't know what his issues were health-wise. I do know that he was taking a lot of pills, like drugs, things that he should not be taking that mess with his brain and you know, [00:59:00] the kind of drugs that you hear about in the news, he was taking amphetamines.
Uppers, yeah. To get
up in the morning. Downers to calm himself down. Yeah. Constant cocktail. He was gaining weight. Yes. Very bloated. Very bloated. There's. Some evidence. He had a, a lung respiratory issue in his last few months that, oh, some say would've killed him in a few months anyway. Maybe a fungal infection or, or something in his lungs.
He complained about breathing a lot and chest pains. He was falling apart physically.
Yeah.
As the town was falling apart is a institution.
The way his followers viewed him though, it's just insane. They couldn't see it. Like Shirley has, there's one document where Shirley is talking about Jones, and this is how she speaks about him.
She says, dad, dad's high points are high commitment, his dedication, how he works day and night. He lives at the level of the people equality. No one is any more special than another. Some of these letters are written weirdly because you can tell that [01:00:00] they're exhausted. Yeah. So I am reading it word for word.
Okay.
Yeah. The grammar can, yes. Get a little slip shot. Can
get a little sloppy. How he works day and night. He lives at the level of the people equality. No one is any more special than another. Dedication to ideals, dependable to people. I believe Dad stands for those who cannot, and he believes individual and group criticism.
Dad is willing to hear and believes in free thinking as long as he hears it first. Dad is the principal and he stands above all else. He never raises his voice dependable, not deviant, such as molesting children. That's where it ends. Mm-hmm. Like we're
all equal, but he stands above all else. Some are more equal than others.
Yeah. But also like he's okay with free thinking if you only give your free thoughts to him. Mm-hmm. So he can manipulate them and make you feel bad about it. Right? Yeah. And then [01:01:00] he's not a deviant, like he doesn't molest kids. What? Why is that your bar Shirley? God damn.
Yeah. 'cause they would often, the members would write accusations about other members just to again, have dirt, dirt, dirt, power or something.
Yeah. People would write about, would write fake confessions to themselves or about themselves in 10.
And then Lori, her daughter wrote a little bit saying, dad does not believe in God. He believes he is the only God he will die for us. Mm-hmm. I mean, Lori, yeah. That poor girl didn't stand a chance. Now Shirley was someone who, correct me if I'm wrong, 'cause this is what I am assuming after reading and researching, I feel like she could have been someone who chose how.
To do the mass suicide murder, [01:02:00] or she helped in that sort of conversation.
There was a letter that she definitely wrote where for whatever reason she was asked like her health, she thinks the community should carry out a mass death.
Mm-hmm.
And she wasn't the only one that was cons, that was a writing topic that was given to a lot of people, not Oh, okay.
Quite everyone, to the degree of every single person. Yeah. But so she wrote back her suggestion and Yeah, you go ahead. You know what I'm talking about.
Yeah. I pulled up the letter here. It's a little long. I'll try and just read fast. 'cause it does have a lot of her, it has a lot of insight in it. Mm-hmm.
She says, dear Dad, thank you dad. I am definitely in favor of a revolutionary suicide. Because of the children and those who can't participate for their protection. When I worked in a cancer clinic, I saw people [01:03:00] dying and deteriorating for no reason how much better to lay down my body for a principle.
Now I feel that if we do commit revolutionary suicide, we should do it in such a way that we will be heard in all quarters of the world and the most publicity we can get for communism. One way I think we can do this is by reference to food. Food and malnutrition is an emotionally packed subject. The idea that we could stop eating or cut down occurred to me last night in our meeting, this would be a different way to commit revolutionary suicide.
And I wonder how many people who believe in suicide would be willing to do this a slower way, but as much as effective. Like, so she's like, listen. If we do a slow starvation of our whole community, we'll get the public's attention.
Yeah.
For this revolutionary suicide. Now I hear Revolution, revolutionary suicide.
I see. They're doing it for the children and for world.
Mm-hmm.
What [01:04:00] will their death do? What do they think it will do?
I guess they thought the world would be so horrified by what they chose to do, but for their beliefs that it would shake us out of our. Up, sleep, us walking and get us to change our ways.
Okay.
That's what they hoped, I guess. Yeah. That they thought maybe it would cause some effective change, some evaluation on society's parts. Maybe
that's, I mean, it's such a nebulous concept of dying to die, so others see it. I'm sure they knew it in their heart when they were there and could explain it better.
Mm-hmm. Than what these letters are showing, but it's hard to understand today. Now, do you believe that Shirley and or Don would've known that cyanide? Was it on like in the area or on site?
I think without question, [01:05:00] Don being the pharmacist. Right. Almost certainly had to have known that when it, when it arrived, did he make the concoction?
It was possibly, we know a few of the individuals who helped mix and distribute. I don't know if, I don't think his name came up actively, but again, there's not really, there's only a few witnesses who survived can pinpoint. But yeah, he definitely would've known that cyanide in large quantities was being kept in the town.
'cause not everybody knew it, obviously it was, you know, secreted away whether Shirley knew. Right. Who knows.
Yeah.
Maybe he told her. But apparently Don and Shirley weren't on the best of terms towards the end anyway, so Didn't seem like it. Yeah. Yeah.
Well. Back at home in the us. As you said, family members were getting a little stirred up.
They were upset. They wanted to see their friends, their family, their loved ones. Yeah. And eventually the US representative, Leo j Ryan
from California.
From California, he flies [01:06:00] to Jonestown on November 17th, 1978, where he would lead an investigative delegation to Jonestown. Yeah. In response to all the complaints and the worries, the on human rights concerns.
Yeah. A human rights kind of thing.
Envoy, himn, some media. It was kind of odd how the whole trip was put together and there was a lot of back and forth between Jones and the outsiders, whether they would even allow them in 'cause they were not invited. And Jonestown was private property.
Yeah.
And you know, Jones said they weren't gonna let Ryan in at the gate.
And there was some media members that Jones already had issues with, which might have. Set him on edge a little bit more. 'cause you're bringing guys he doesn't already like
and Right. Well, they always hate the media wasn't, yeah. Who's telling your story in a plain, truthful way.
And obviously he didn't want the government, Leo Orion there at all.
Right? No. The
government at all. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But his
attorneys convinced him it was better to let him in. Than [01:07:00] just
let it happen. Like
try to do a positive spin. Mm-hmm. You know, this is an impressive community. I mean, you've built this town at how great it nothing. Let him in and show 'em. Like, if, if you've got not, if,
if there's nothing to hide, then open your door.
Yep.
Yeah. That's what his attorneys kind of said, you know, the quickest way to get them to leave you alone is to just show them that they, they've got nothing to clinging to. But
yeah. When Ryan and his crew, his guests showed up at Jonestown, they had done just that Jonestown, Jim Jones and the community set up a way to.
Look great.
They put their best foot forward. They had a, did big banquet with the food that the rank and file hadn't had in a long time. Yeah. They made it look like they had, you know,
a feast when there wasn't feasting happening. Yeah. Most
hadn't eaten meat for a while. Yeah. But suddenly there was
meat available.
There was the,
the, the Jonestown Express, the band performed the all night. The night.
What was interesting that I saw though, was that only 162 of the residents were allowed to speak to the guests. Yeah. And they were considered the [01:08:00] community task force. Mm-hmm. So they were the ones able to say positive things look favorably upon Jonestown, but they also needed to keep the.
More erratic. Yeah. Residents away. More dramatic ones.
They were babysitters as well as like emissaries. Mm-hmm. The trusted, the ones that Jones trusted to like
Yeah. Toe
the line.
And in this moment, Jones is getting a little more paranoid. I mean, things are still going okay, but in the, in his brain, he's like this invasion.
It's happening. Yeah, it's happening. It's thick in the air.
And Shirley and Don were on this list, right? Yes. Is that what you're, okay.
Oh yeah. I forgot to say that. Yes. Yeah. Shirley and Don were a part of the task force. They were allowed to speak to the guests. Yeah. And they also had to keep others away that weren't allowed to be around the guests.
One
confer that Jones wouldn't have picked them if he didn't trust them as true believers, right?
Oh, I believe they were true believers. Yeah, I do. So Ryan loves the visit so much. He's completely bamboozled [01:09:00] by it all. He's just seeing good things a lot. I think part of it was the laziness of an American of being like, yeah, it's good enough.
'cause I think if you did any sort of hunting or searching, like you looked at the living quarters of these people, or you did any sort of like, Hey, where's the rest of your food after this meal? Where do you store your food? I think he would've found an issue,
and they kept certain buildings off limits according to one account.
The elderly women, they just crammed in one room and shut and didn't want,
you just can't have old people.
The super old and firm, they just crammed in one cabin or lodge. Yeah. Like they just, it's weird. The ones that they couldn't really provide adequate care for, the ones one that looked the most alien, needed more hair than you could provide in the middle of a jungle.
Right. The actual sick. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Ryan didn't really look very hard and he goes up on stage. He speaks into the mic, he speaks to everyone and he says, questions have been raised about your operation [01:10:00] here. Whatever the comments are, there are some people here who say this is the best thing that ever happened to them in their whole life.
So he's saying that he went around and talked some people and they were like, yep. Best ever. Mm-hmm. Love it here. And he's just going, okay, cool. Got it.
But it's important to note that according to like some of the other guests who survived that they knew something was wrong, but you can't really voice it 'cause you're outnumbered.
So I bet Ryan was saying a little bit of what was expected of him.
Yeah. Probably because you're in that kind of, he's the room kind of. Yeah. I'm
outnumbered. There's a thousand people here with me and my 20 people. Yeah.
If they
turn on us, we're screwed.
Yeah. So the crowd erupted in Cheers. Yeah. As Ryan was like, you guys are great.
This is great. Everything's great. Mm-hmm. Whatever. Mm-hmm. But when he was still there, not up on stage, but he was done talking. He was back mingling. Someone [01:11:00] did slip a note to him asking for help, saying they wanted to get out.
Slipped it to a reporter who He mistook for him. Yes. But yeah, he intended to give it to Ryan.
He gave it to a news reporter. Yes. But yeah. But then that reporter tells everybody else Yeah. In the,
didn't the reporter tell Jones
he the next day?
It was the next day. Okay. That's really he the front of mine camera. Okay. So let's back up. Don't go too far ahead. Um, I don't wanna get too confused. This a lot happens right here.
Yeah. So I don't wanna get too messed up here. Okay. Everything
goes down quick.
So Ryan speaks on stage, says everything looks great, crowd erupts, and then someone gives a reporter the note saying, help, we want Al I don't know exactly what it said, but to that effect, it said, yeah. Fact, I wanna leave. I wanna leave.
Yeah.
The reporter does tell his group, not anyone else, but his, his people. Yeah.
Ryan and the Entourage. Yes. Yeah.
And they. Do come back and ask if anyone else wants to leave with them. Mm-hmm. Correct. Yes. And they end up picking up 15 more people that say we wanna leave. Once hands are coming up, he starts
asking, [01:12:00] leave.
Who wants to leave with
me? Wants,
suddenly the hands go up. Right? Not a lot. Really?
15 out of almost a thousand. Isn. That's not that much. Yeah.
And Jones of course freaks out,
but did the reporter show Jones that letter the following day?
Yes.
That little note
right before, so, and there's
a documentary. Yeah.
Sorry. It pisses me off. 'cause he does it in such a way of like, if everyone loves it here, why do, why do I get this note?
So on the 18th, the afternoon is, you know, Ryan's entourage is gathering up those who wanna leave and surveying people. One of the reporters sits down and interviews Jones one more time and he kind of, yeah, he kind of throws it in his face of like, look at this note I got.
Yeah. And when you watch it, you can see Jones's face To me that's like the. I mean, who knows where. Exactly. But that's where I pinpoint, like that's where it flipped in his head. Yeah. Like this is it. This is it.
And is this in the documentary from 2018 [01:13:00] Jonestown Terror in the Jungle? Yes, I believe it is.
Yeah. Yeah. But if you wanna see a good documentary about it, Jonestown Terror in the Jungle. Yeah. Now Ryan and the reporters and everyone, they've collected 15 defectors and they wanna leave. One of the defectors is,
yep. He's a plant.
He's a plant. And he, he's a loyalist. Mm-hmm. He's there, he's planted in and everyone's driving to or getting to Port Kama
Kama.
Yeah. It's the nearest town. It's six miles away. Yeah. It's with an air strip. Six miles in the jungle is, is lot an hour drive. It's not six miles around town.
Yeah,
yeah,
yeah. So they're driving there with the defectors ready to go on the, trying to get to the plane. What they don't know is that there are some of Jones's guards following them as well.
Mm-hmm.
And what happens first here?
The trucks pull up the [01:14:00] defectors and the Ryan Entourage trucks pull up to the airstrip at Port Kaituma first. Mm-hmm. And there's two planes. They had a radio to get a second plane because they had more defectors than they anticipate stickers.
Plane is just a small, like, yeah.
It's just
a small to bring the tiny, the media. And they're waiting for a second plane. And the second plane lands, and as they're loading these flat bed trucks roll up from Jonestown and, uh, eight to 10 guys get off at the back with shotguns and rifles and just open fire. Oh, and there's camera footage, video footage mm-hmm.
Of one of the cameramen filming it as they roll up. And. He, he's shot and the camera falls to the ground and keeps recording until it cuts to, to, uh, there's no more film. Static film. Yeah. Yeah. And wow. Yeah. So there was, ended up five people were killed.
Yeah. You can see a little bit of footage of this.
It's out there, the camera falls, and then it's still rolling. So you hear and [01:15:00] see. You can
hear the shots. You can see people walking and running and screaming. I
do always encourage people to look at that stuff because we have the privilege and luxury of not being in that situation. But in order to have sympathy or empathy of any kind, I think it's important to I see it, see it, and hear it, and feel it as much as you can without actually doing it.
And the mole or plant you referenced, Larry Leighton, he, as the gunman were shooting, he pulled out a gun of his own. And started shooting people on one of the planes as well. Oh yeah. So there was like a two-prong attack of, from the outside, and then there was an insider who turned and started shooting as well.
But some of the others there were able to take him down. But then the other shooters all drove back into the jungle once their handwork was done. They just, they, they killed Ryan, one of the defectors and three media [01:16:00] members. Yep. Mm-hmm. And injured several more.
Nine,
nine more. Okay. Yep. So then once they were done, they just, there wasn't really any resistance.
Everybody just fled into the jungle that could and
that was it. Well, they had to go back and tell Jones what they did.
Interestingly, there was Guyanese military nearby standing there, and they didn't do anything because American, from their perspective, it's like American. Yeah. He's a bunch of crazy Americans shooting each other.
We're not getting involved in this. Yeah.
No way. Smart. Yeah. Smart. Yep. So as the attack is happening or as they leave Jones back at Jonestown, he's, he calls for a meeting at the pavilion. Mm-hmm. Now he's, he's all in. There is a 44 minute recording of him informing the crowd that Ryan will be killed and says that American and Guyanese military forces will come down on them, take their children and torture them.
This, this is after years of them being indoctrinated. Yes. That's coming any day. And now's the day. Now.
Now's the day. Now, this 44 minute [01:17:00] recording is known as the death tape.
Yes.
It is very eerie to listen to Cole and I have both listened to this death tape in its entirety because I believe that this helps with sympathy and empathy in our world.
But de describe, not necessarily what he says, but the feel of this tape. It's like a warbled. There's like weird, it's almost like when you listen to like, am I on acid? What's happening?
For the longest time it was thought that because there's like weird music playing in the background and for the longest time it was thought that maybe there was someone perform like a organist playing music during it.
That's not true. It was recorded over. A music tape.
The Del Phonics Yeah. Del Phonics song. I'm sorry.
Yeah. They were a Philadelphia. I don't I know that song. I'll play it for you sometime. Okay. But it was, it was slowed down and Jones's speech was played over it, or recorded over it. So there was no live [01:18:00] music being heard at the time.
But it adds this weird, there's like this, the, the Onic singer's voices are Yeah. Slowed and destroy background. And
did they do that 'cause they were out of like tape or, yeah, I
think they just, they, they reuse tape a lot.
Okay. He's not that artistic. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, they
just reused tape a lot. And there's also, while the tape itself is 44 minutes, you can tell there are, there's beens research on, there's, there's numerous cuts.
Mm-hmm.
So he was talking for more than 44 minutes straight. We don't know when in those cuts. Right. Or for how long they lasted. Right. But yeah, could have gone on for. Two hours, three hours. We have no idea. And why did he turn it off? Why did he record it at all? Yeah, he recorded it. 'cause he wanted someone to find it.
He wants people to find this. But he also wanted
certain things not found. Yeah.
He was trying to control his legacy until the end to the end. And there's one woman in it who argues vehemently with him against getting suicide, was like asking for
alternatives. Yeah. She's, can we do anything else [01:19:00] proposing?
Yeah. And she's largely shouted down mm-hmm. By her compatriots. Yep. 'cause he
is telling everyone it's time. The revolutionary suicide is now.
Yeah. It's, it's
happening now and this is the time to do it. And people are having a conversation and a dialogue, but he's just shutting them down. Yeah.
And there might have been others who argued against it and he just didn't record those.
Yeah. Who know? But I mean,
right.
If there were, there weren't clearly enough.
No. Not enough to overthrow and. As soon as Jones receives word that Ryan was killed.
Mm-hmm.
This is when he tells his congregation to drink the medicine.
Yeah.
Just in case we forgot the medicine was a mixture of cyanide, tranquilizers and flavor aid.
I believe that they really did think that this would be painless because of the tranquilizers. Did they think that the T traks would hit first before the cyanide and you would just fall asleep? Yeah.
I mean, and recording. He's telling them. I do think they wanted it to be [01:20:00] painless. Yeah. And I, I mean, I don't think, and I don't think Jones intended it to be painful.
I don't think he was a sadist in that sense necessarily. He just
wanted them all to die.
Yeah. And I, it probably was a legit mistake, if you wanna use that term, that it, I mean, I think they just don't, they didn't know what they were doing. What Cyanide poison apparently the, the doctor in town. Tried poison, tried poisoning a pig a week or so beforehand.
There was some, some, I remember that, some reference to that, but I don't think they knew really what Sinai did to your body and what you experience. They just think, as he says in the recording, it's just like going to sleep. It's just like crossing over and it's a horrible way to go.
Yeah. I know that cyanide poisoning is like a slower, it's not as fast as people would think it is.
Mm-hmm. But what's actually happening, do you know?
I believe it. It blocks your blood cells from being able to absorb oxygen. So while you're conscious, uric, [01:21:00] essentially asphyxiating, you're trying to catch your breath. You're trying to inhale, but nothing's coming. Oh, but you're, I mean, you can imagine what that's like.
Yeah. And eventually your mouth starts S suffocating. Frothing, you know, foam at the mouth. You're just trying to do anything to, and so yeah, you suffocate, you suffocate. Without any, you know, just, you just suffocate. Yeah.
It's like drowning in air. Yeah. Essentially.
So you're not just nodding off going to sleep, you are awake as you suddenly can't breathe.
The parents were instructed to give the drink or the medicine to their children first, and on the death tape you can hear he didn't cut this part out, which is wild to me. If he wanted people to believe that it was painless and like going to sleep, he let this part stay. He
can't
control
everything and
it's, but he, but he could have, that's the thing.
He could have controlled that and he chose not to. Maybe,
maybe he didn't hear what was going there was probably [01:22:00] screaming ca chaos going on and
Exactly. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Oh yeah. Shut it off. Don't let people hear that.
Yeah. Like
he was the last one to die anyway.
Yeah.
He shot himself that bastard.
He didn't even take shot him or someone shot him. He didn't die by poison though. Yeah. So I don't think, because he died after everyone else. Him and his nurse were the last two standing. Or a nurse. Yeah, sorry, not his nurse. A nurse. I don't
know for a fact that they were the last two, but they're the only two who died from gunshot wounds.
Right. And we generally,
we just assume, yeah, it's the last ones.
But
yeah, I don't know. Now the parents, when they were instructed to give their children this medicine, you can hear the children screaming and crying. And I will warn you right now, I am going to play roughly 10 to 15 seconds of those children.
It is heart wrenching and it brings me to tears every time. If you do not want to listen to it or you're somewhere where you don't want other people to hear it [01:23:00] again, 10 to 20 seconds, this is your time to skip ahead or find a better place to be. But I am going to play it and I will link this death tape in the show notes.
So if you wanna hear the whole thing, you can.
Friend, you're sitting there, show your love for one another,
make children come, ah, let's get calm. Let's get calm us. We had nothing we could do. We can't, we can't separate ourselves from our own people
for 20 years laying in some old rotten nursing home.
Okay, I'm gonna take a minute. That always gets me. Okay. I'm back. Okay. Always tough. [01:24:00] And if you listened to that with me, thank you. Um, please, I do urge everyone to listen to it. It'll just strike you in a way that will force empathy onto you and into your heart and soul. But, um. The truth I think is necessary.
The truth isn't always pretty. It's ugly. Yeah. It's, it's, you know, it's not good all the time.
Go through life with rose tinted glasses, you don't see the red flags. Yeah.
Now, Jones, he just, he believes that this mass suicide or forced suicide, revolutionary suicide, as he like
to call it,
that this will show the world.
Every, like, it'll show them the way that we're wrong. That, like you said, people need to exit this world by their own hand in order to not, you know, I don't know that that video or that audio still in my head, those kids crying and you can hear it in the background, but yeah, I just dunno how that's a revolutionary suicide.
I don't get it. I don't [01:25:00] understand it. And there were even people that couldn't take the medicine, you know, I'm sure after seeing the kids die the way they did, if you didn't have kids of your own, you might not want to take that medicine or the, the, the flavor. A the drink. Yeah. And they were injected concoction.
Yeah. Forcefully. Like they found people dead with injections. Yeah. Because they didn't take it
bent, bent, syringe needles and Yeah.
Yeah. There were guards with guns that were keeping them there too. Like these people had no way out. And
weirdly, I mean, everyone with a gun, except for all those gunmen and men armed with cross bows, they all took the poison.
Yeah. They didn't turn on anyone. Yeah.
And the. A handful of individuals who survived by escaping essentially, or hiding. They did like go past guards or say something to them and the guards didn't stop them. Oh
yeah. There is a story of a few people. Yeah. Just walking by and kind of looking at the guards that they knew.
Yeah. They like, they know everyone don't,
strangers. They all knew each other, [01:26:00] so they
look right at 'em and with a look of just kind of like, do it.
Yeah. And the one guy, one guard sent, sent to the, I'm gonna make you shoot me. I can't remember if it was Stanley Clayton or Odell Rhodes. They were two of the survivors separately.
They just basically, they're like, I'm not doing this. Yeah. And walked off and they walked past the guards taking their chance of like, mm-hmm. Shoot me if you want. And the one said like, well have a nice life. And just,
yeah.
Didn't do anything to stop him,
but didn't stop himself either. Yeah.
It's important to note also that the children were killed first, so that afterwards, like if you're a parent, like if you're Jones, you've removed their.
Own incentive to live. Right? Yeah. Like, like you've just killed your kid.
That's why I said if I was not a parent, I would not if I was a parent and I just killed my kid that way. Yeah. And all the reality of, wow, what he just said was a lie. I don't deserve to live. Yeah. I would, I would, I would probably take my life immediately if I took my child's life.
And one of those two men I referenced, again, I can't remember if it was Stanley Clayton or Odell Rhodes, but one of them who was close to the kids, I think he [01:27:00] was like an assistant teacher or something with the, his account. He was like holding the kids one by one as they were like trying to give them some last minute comfort as they died.
And eventually he just, yeah.
Well, November 18th, 1978, just a few hours after the massacre, Guyanese soldiers, they hacked their way to the 909 bodies that were piled up and scattered about. Some had their arms around those near them. Others, like I said, had syringes stuck into them. I mean, it's clear that murder happened here.
Yeah.
Four other Temple members died in Georgetown, the Capitol. They were out of the city or out of the, out of Jonestown to do. They had other things. Outposts. Yeah. Yeah. But four other Temple members died after getting word to do so. Like hey. Mm-hmm. It's time. And
yeah, mom killed her teenage daughter and her two younger kids with herself.[01:28:00]
With a knife. With a knife. Yeah. Not even poison. Just cut her own throat. Her Well, she didn't have poison.
Yeah. Jesus. And then there was the five that were killed with the representative Ryan. So this totals to 918, which is the greatest loss of American lives from a non-natural disaster until nine 11 happened.
Yep. Bodies were everywhere, and with little to no identification on any of them, if they did have a form of ID or a passport or anything that was taken upon arrival. Yeah, so they didn't have anything like on their person. So a lot of people were kind of just un unidentified for a while. Now when you spoke with Mac, he mentioned that his wife Rebecca, had two sisters in Jonestown.
Yes.
And they both died there, right?
Yes.
And did one of her sisters even have a child with Jim Jones? Yes. While she was in Jonestown?
While with People's Temple. [01:29:00] People's Temple? He was already, yeah, the child was born in the us.
Okay. Do you know if Rebecca met him ever?
I know. I know she met Jim Jones at least once really?
But I don't know if she ever met her
nephew. Her nephew. Okay.
The nephew also died? Yes. In Jonestown. Those of those same, yeah. Both the
sisters and the children died there. Yeah. Mac and Rebecca were the ones who started to put everything in one place, including the names of those who died.
Yeah. Mac was the first one to have all 918 names.
Yeah, and he was the first one to publish that.
Mac did say that listing the dead from Jonestown didn't happen until a few weeks later, like by the officials. Oh yeah. They didn't start writing names down or really knowing who was who until a few weeks after the massacre, and
there was big. Yeah. Initially, like the number of dead was, that number fluctuated was 400.
Yeah. Initially they said growing 400 and then, yeah.
It was a big mess. Yeah. There was a lot. Mack also said that even the earliest identifications, [01:30:00] including his sister-in-law, they weren't known until late November or early December.
Yeah.
And he said that. He said, he said, we knew they were there. Yeah. You knew.
You know, knew these people were there, but we couldn't say that, which one is which. That's that person. Yeah. Yeah. After the massacre, Donald and Shirley were initially identified as G 54 and G 55. They weren't fully identified until later in the process. Yeah. Bodies were flown from Guyana to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
412 bodies went unclaimed. Mark, the son of Don and Shirley, he was a part of this 412. Yeah. And he was buried in a mass grave in Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California.
Most of the unclaimed four 12 were juveniles. Okay. Just because they didn't have many records to compare the bodies against as [01:31:00] far as you know, fingerprints.
Okay. Dental records, Lori, she was identified. Mm-hmm. Somehow, and she has her own individual grave, as do both of her parents.
Parents. They're all three buried in individual Graves, side by side at Eden Memorial Park in Mission Hills, Los Angeles, California. Yeah. Shirley was one of eight Michiganders that died in Jonestown.
Mm-hmm. And I would just like to say the names of these victims as well, because. Like we set up top. Yeah. It's far too often that everyone is lumped in together and everyone is just known as Jonestown, or known as Kool-Aid or just all one thing. Yeah. When these are individuals, they made individual choices and they all went to People's Temple for their own reasons, and most of them were good.
We have Jeffrey Carey from Flint.
He was one of the pioneers of Jonestown. Really? He was one of the first group to go down there and start clearing the forest, the jungle.
Oh [01:32:00] dang. In
late 73. Early 74. He was one of the, yeah.
Okay. Wow. I did not know that.
Yeah.
And then the Hicks family of four from Detroit.
Mm-hmm.
And then Barbara Cordell from Grand Rapids, Mary Beth Spoon, also from Grand Rapids. Yes. Then Shirley Fields from Bay City, Michigan.
Mary Weatherspoon, I interviewed her sister.
Oh, you did?
Who recent? Who Last year, maybe it was a year and a half ago, wrote a book, a memoir about her sister.
Oh.
So yeah.
Wow.
And also, of note, one of the survivors of that day, Odell Rhodes, is also from Detroit. So there was a night Michigander there that day. And he survived. And he survived.
Wow. Okay. Yeah. But before we close this episode, I wanted to have a couple quotes from Steven Jones. Okay. He, he's good for those. He's so good.
Oh my God.
He has a lot of writings [01:33:00] on Mac and Rebecca's website as well. Oh, that'd be a good place to look. And there, yeah, there's like an author page with all of his essays.
And if you wanna see Cole's writing about Shirley Fields, it is also on Mac and Rebecca's website. But I will also link the individual ones too, from the M Live accounts.
Yeah. Steven Jones is one of the people still alive today that. Really understands his dad on a different level than other people do. Yeah. Most people, I would say because of the age that he was, I mean, growing up with it 100% of the time, you know, from birth, but also being a. Teenager, young adult in Jonestown during that time specifically.
Mm-hmm. That's gotta be very trauma inducing. 'cause you remember a lot from that time and it all kind of sinks in there and then it's just there. You can't really grow out of it. We note it is what it is. We should know. The
reason that he survived was that he was not actually in Jonestown the day in question.
He and several other young men, basketball players, right? Yeah. They were part of a, Jonestown had its own [01:34:00] basketball team. Mm-hmm And he and the team were in Georgetown playing games at the time. Yeah. And Marceline Jones, Steven's mom, she died. She did die there. But by his account, she made it a point to get him and some of his other brothers out of the town for the basketball tournament.
Because Did Jones try to keep them from going to the basketball tournament? Yeah,
yeah. He wanted it canceled. And then even after this, the order was given back at Jonestown of the 18th, he radioed to Georgetown trying to. Get Steven and his brothers to come back and they were like, no, we're not coming back just to die.
That's stupid. Yeah.
I mean, I think that Steven has some of the most in depth quotes, not even in depth, but just you can see the levels of emotion and the levels of processing and the levels of him trying to understand He, he's a very thoughtful
guy.
Yeah, very thoughtful. And he, one of the quotes, he says in, in reference to Jonestown, that some of the very [01:35:00] best people I've ever known, many of them were in the temple.
Some of the very worst people were in it too. It was a rich community with so many lovely people, better people than me, lost their lives on that day. Yeah. And then he also left you with kind of a warning in your final article with him. Mm-hmm. He says. The deaths can still serve as a warning to others who may find themselves part of a movement that turns controlling.
No matter how good something initially appears, one should listen to their gut. No matter how good something initially appears, one should listen to their gut when they begin sensing something amiss. This is especially true when a movements leader presents him or herself as being superior to the flock.
Yep.
And I just wanted to leave on that quote. You quote that warning today. Yeah,
the last decade or so.
But yeah, that's our first Jonestown [01:36:00] installment. A little teaser for the next one. It's not gonna be next episode. I have no idea when it'll be through. It's pepper 'em. Yep, we're through the run. Gonna sprinkle them in.
But we did have a lovely visit with photographer Tim Chapman last year. We visited him in his place and he gave us a lovely interview. He is one of the first photographers on the scene. Yeah. He was working for the Miami Herald at the time and he let us look at his personal collection that he kept in the Miami History Miami Museum.
And we have,
if you've seen, if you've ever seen a color photograph of the Jonestown carnage. Mm-hmm. Odds are he's the one who snapped it.
Yes. And he just had a great perspective for, as an outsider coming into this and being like, what the fuck?
Yeah. He had what happened? Never even heard of Jim Jones until he got Not a clue.
Got flown into,
yeah.
Take photos of it. So
I will go through, grab some audio recordings from him as well and, um. Yeah, probably in a few months. Like I said, pepper [01:37:00] through. Yeah, rush. It'll come back. But yeah, if you like Jonestown, this is kind of a Jonestown background sort of podcast, I guess. Yeah, for a little bit anyway.
But yeah, so keep an eye out for that if you're interested. And in the meantime, follow us on Blue Sky at Borrowed Bones, or my personal Blue Sky account and Daughter of Marauders.
Yes,
that's it.
Thank you for listening.
