claimed that one of the group had whispered the same thing, barely audibly to him.
On their return to Jonestown the next day, the journalists found Leo Ryan sitting with 15 people who had dared to say they wanted to leave. The plane in which Ryan and the journalists had made the trip to Guyana was only small, and it would have been impossible to carry the additional passengers back with them. So it was decided that they would have to call for a second plane to come and get them. The group was divided into two. Ryan was going to stay at the settlement and see if he could persuade any others to defect, but as the journalists and the defectors were about to leave, one of the Temple’s elders lunged at Ryan with a knife. He missed him, and Ryan was hauled onto the departing vehicle by his travelling companions. They travelled immediately to the airfield but the second plane had not yet arrived and they had to wait 40 minutes. As they reached the runway, a vehicle drove out at them, firing at them as it gave chase. Leo Ryan, one reporter, a cameraman and a photographer were killed straightaway. Then one of the followers, undoubtedly planted amongst the infidels by Jones, opened fire and murdered the pilot.
THE END OF THE IDEAL
Clearly already aware of the fate of Leo Ryan and his accompanying party, Jim Jones could forestall the inevitable no longer and knew that before long his ‘utopia’ would be destroyed. He gathered his community in front of him, and told them that it was time for them to depart to a better place, and that they were too good for the world they currently inhabited. He was talking about the complete destruction of everything he had created, and as he spoke, a concoction of cyanide and sedative-laced soft drinks was brought out to his people. Babies were brought forward first, and the deadly liquid injected into their mouths. Remaining children were the next to die. Finally it was the turn of the adults. One by one they queued up to take this poison, but some showed their fear. Their belief failed them and they didn’t want to die. Those who refused the poison had their throats cut by Temple elders, or were shot in the head. Jim Jones was taking his entire congregation with him.
CARNAGE
The scene which greeted the Guyanese soldiers who arrived the next day was complete and total carnage. Only one or two terrified survivors were found, having crawled into tiny spaces underneath buildings and hidden to save themselves. Others were missing, presumably having escaped into the jungle. Of a total of 1,100 people believed to be in the compound, 913 were found dead. The body of Jim Jones was found with a single bullet wound in the right temple, believed to be self-inflicted.
Investigations into the massacre at Jonestown, and into The People’s Temple revealed that in fact, Jim Jones had been preparing his people for this mass suicide for many years. He was paranoid that the American government was planning to destroy him, his people and his work and had instilled the idea in the minds of his followers that he was their salvation, that as long as they obeyed and trusted only him he would look after them. Therefore, when the order came from their leader, their ‘father’, that the enemy was finally upon them and about to slaughter them all, they were trained to follow his instructions and believed that in so doing, they were taking a noble and dignified path to a better place.
The bodies, many unidentifiable, were brought home to the United States, where many cemeteries refused to bury them. Eventually, the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland agreed to take the bodies – 409 in total. A memorial service is held there annually to remember those who died. The remainder were buried in family graveyards, or cremated.
Sadly, the 913 deaths recorded in Jonestown were not the end of the story. Members of the Temple who had survived the mass suicide in Guyana, took their own lives, and the lives of their children, within months of returning home anyway. Ex-members of the Temple, who presumably felt safe speaking out against Jim Jones and his followers following the disaster, were found shot dead.
Jonestown, having already been looted by locals, was destroyed by fire in the early 1980s.
Siberian Satanist Cult
In 1996, in the Russian city of Tyumen in Siberia, 1,400 miles east of Moscow, five young people were found hanged between the months of April and October. Police who investigated the individual deaths at first recorded them simply as suicides – tragic, but arousing no suspicion or cause for any further enquiries. However, when a link began to emerge between the five youths, the cases were re-opened, and a much larger investigation began to take shape.
Scribblings relating to secret and mystical beliefs were found amongst some of the possessions of the suicide victims. Decipherable, these related to an initiation ceremony, the final stage of which was ritual asphyxiation. Although the five youths had not died together, it was firmly believed that the deaths were somehow connected and that they had been involved in a very sinister organisation.
It emerged that this group of five had in fact been friends. Their ages varied, ranging from 17 to 22, but they all assembled together regularly in a basement. The basement, police discovered, contained a satanic altar, and the walls were adorned with signs of the devil, and secret messages which could not be understood.
The fourth of the quintet to die, Sergei Sidorov, had confided in his mother prior to his death that he was involved in something from which he could not escape. He told her that he was a satanist, but that even though he knew it was wrong he could not break out. When the father of Stas Buslov, a friend of Sergei who had died just before him, was informed of the details which were coming to light, he did some research of his own. He discovered that, in the previous year in the Tyumen region, 36 deaths by hanging had been recorded. All were aged between 12 and 22.
Despite having amassed no evidence to confirm that these were the actions of cult members, police believed that the deaths must have been the work of some kind of satanic cult. In March 1997, they launched a search for its leaders. It is rumoured that the head of the cult was a man in his early forties. With the help of two, younger assistants, he is believed to play on the naivety of the innocent, local children, persuading them to join him and his followers. Whether the deaths of the children of Tyumen were acts of murder, or whether their suicides were encouraged, or even demanded, is unlikely ever to be revealed. The police enquiries have so far been unsuccessful and it looks increasingly improbable that the truth will ever be revealed.
Section Two: Cult Killings
Adolfo De Jesus Constanzo
In 1989, only three months since New Year’s Day, 60 people had been reported missing in the region of Matamoros, Mexico. Whether or not this was common knowledge, it would not have deterred the spring-break students of that year who had been planning their holiday, as generations of college-leavers had done for over 50 years before them, in the vice-ridden border town. Matamoros was the obvious choice for the fresh-faced students who had just completed their exams and wanted to party in a town where prostitution, sex-shows, drugs and alcohol were freely available. Matamoros was easily accessible across the Rio Grande from Brownsville in Texas, and so the students, an estimated 250,000 per year, came in their droves. In March 1989, Mark Kilroy was one of the college students to make the same time-honoured journey. Yet, unlike the others, he was never to return.
Mark Kilroy, however, did not simply become the 61st person to go missing. When his disappearance was reported his family demanded action, and his was a family with connections in high places. Immediately, a $15,000 reward was offered for either returning Mark safely to his family, or for information on who was responsible for his
