Jim jones what kind of poison

He had something he could blackmail all of us with. So he came back. The thing was, too, that Jim would not let children off the compound. So if you were going to leave, you were leaving your child.

There was no way of getting a child out of Jonestown. In the long run, Jim gave in to drugs and he got himself boxed into a corner. And his paranoia got completely out of control. What were the warning signs that things might get really dangerous? One big warning sign was that he had revolutionary suicide practices. He called them White Nights. He did this several times, both in the United States and in Guyana.

That sounds like a pretty big warning sign. How did those work? White Night! Get to the pavilion! Your lives are in danger! Then he would tell us that in the United States, African Americans were being herded into concentration camps, that there was genocide on the streets. He said they were on their way. So there you were, in the middle of the jungle.

Shots were being fired, and people were surrounding you with guns. Then a couple of women brought out these trays of cups of what they said was cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, or Flavor-Aid—whichever they had. Everybody drank it. And then Jim would just start laughing and clapping his hands. Sleep tight! Do you think the people who died on November 18 thought at first that it was another dress rehearsal?

No, when the final time came, I think people were aware it was the real thing. It had been a very, very bad day. Congressman Ryan had come to investigate the compound and people were leaving with him. Unless you were one of the lucky ones who happened to sneak off into the jungle, you were dead. Furthermore, they killed all the children first.

That killed a lot of the people at heart before they actually took the Kool-Aid. By the time I got to Guyana, I knew things were getting bad. You walked into the jungle there and saw a sign that said Welcome to the Jonestown Agricultural Project. Then you saw guards with guns up above in watchtowers. And there were the beatings. The worst beating I witnessed was when somebody was accused of being a pedophile. I know pedophilia is horrible, too, but that was just cruel and totally abusive.

There were a number of beatings like that—they were really bad. The turning point for me was in the jungle one day, when one of the aluminum roofs slipped off one of the cottages and made this loud bang. He staged fake "mercenary attacks" with the collusion of his sons, who crept into the jungle to fire guns into the air while the panicked residents cowered on the floor of the pavilion until security guards chased the "intruders" away.

These staged attacks kept Jonestown residents afraid and obedient, hesitant to flee into the bush toward freedom. After reading Moore's memo, Jones announced at that night's rally that someone had tried to poison him for the third time. Jones: We have the sediments, and we're going to study them under the microscope. What kind of beast do we have in our midst? Jones: —know I'm tired of this shit.

If I catch you, the court won't have any opportunity to deal with you, 'cause I'm going to hang you on the highest tree I can find.

Jones: — unintelligible opening food, to watch that food from beginning to end. I don't worry about myself, as much for our people. I want you to watch that food. Jim Jones' jungle compound in South America for at least two years before Americans died there at the command of their cult leader, CNN has learned. Sources in Guyana said the Jonestown camp began obtaining shipments of cyanide -- about a quarter to a half-pound of the deadly poison each month -- as early as , well before most of Jones' followers made the move there.

Jones led his followers to their death after his gunmen killed a visiting congressman, Rep. Jones told the members of his Peoples Temple church that the Guyanese Army would invade their settlement after the murders.

He demanded that parents kill their children first, then take their own lives, rather than face the authorities because of what Jones had done. Of the who died, were children -- from teens to toddlers.

Many were killed by Jones' loyalists, who used syringes to squirt cyanide down their throats. Jones stockpiled cyanide ». CNN was told Jones obtained a jeweler's license to buy cyanide. The chemical can be used to clean gold. But there was no jeweler's operation in Jonestown.

Six months before Ryan arrived on a one-man investigative mission, the settlement's doctor wrote in a memo to Jones:. I would like to give about two grams to a large pig to see how effective our batch is.