Remains of Jonestown victims found more than 3 decades later
Print Edition
MORE than 35 years after the infamous suicide-murder of some 900 people — many forced to drink a cyanide-laced grape drink — in Jonestown, Guyana, the cremated remains of nine victims were found in a dilapidated former funeral home in the US.
The grisly discovery brought back memories of a tragedy that killed hundreds of children and a US congressman and horrified Americans.
Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones in the 1970s moved his San Francisco-based group to Guyana, the only English-speaking country in South America, as allegations of wrongdoing mounted. Hundreds of followers moved there. On November 18, 1978, on a remote jungle airstrip, gunmen from the group ambushed and killed US Rep. Leo Ryan of California, three newsmen and a defector from the group. All were visiting Jonestown on a fact-finding mission to investigate reports of abuses of members.
Jones then orchestrated a ritual of mass murder and suicide, ordering followers to drink cyanide-laced grape drink. Most complied, although survivors described some people being shot, injected with poison, or forced to drink the deadly beverage when they tried to resist.
After the deaths, bodies of 911 massacre victims were brought to Dover Air Force Base, home to the US military’s largest mortuary.
Many of the bodies were decomposed and could not be identified. Several cemeteries refused to take them until the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California, stepped forward in 1979 and accepted 409 bodies. The remaining victims were cremated or buried in family cemeteries.
The newly discovered remains were clearly marked, with the names of the deceased included on death certificates, authorities said. But Kimberly Chandler, spokeswoman for the Delaware Division of Forensic Science, declined to release the names of the nine people. Chandler said officials were working to notify relatives.
She said the agency found the remains last week on a site visit prompted by a call from the property’s current owner — a bank.
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