Jonestown became internationally infamous when, on November 18, 1978, a total of 918[1][2] people died at the settlement; at the nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma; and at a Temple-run building in Georgetown, Guyana's capital city.

[9][10] Seventy or more individuals at Jonestown were injected with poison, a third of the victims were minors, and armed guards had been ordered to shoot anyone who attempted to flee the settlement as Jones lobbied for suicide.

[25] Increasing public support in California gave Jones access to several high-ranking political figures, including vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale and First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

[29] Later, Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham stated that Jones may have "wanted to use cooperatives as the basis for the establishment of socialism, and maybe his idea of setting up a commune meshed with that.

[47] He also said that, when Deputy Minister Ptolemy Reid traveled to Washington, D.C. in September 1977 to sign the Panama Canal Treaties, Mondale, by this point the U.S. Vice President, asked him, "How's Jim?

[48] Jones left the same night that an editor at New West magazine read to him an article to be published by Marshall Kilduff detailing allegations of abuse by former Temple members.

[53][54] This also comported with the Temple's practice of gradually subjecting its followers to sophisticated mind control and behavior modification techniques borrowed from Mao Zedong and Kim Il-sung.

In addition to Soviet documentaries, political thrillers such as The Parallax View (1974), The Day of the Jackal (1973), State of Siege (1972) and Z (1969) were repeatedly screened and minutely analyzed by Jones.

[56] Jonestown had a closed-circuit television system, but no one could view anything in the way of film or recorded TV, no matter how innocuous or seemingly politically neutral, without a Temple staffer present to "interpret" the material for the viewers.

[64] Temple members lived in small communal houses, some with walls woven from Troolie palm, and ate meals that reportedly consisted of nothing more on some days than rice, beans, greens and occasionally meat, sauce and eggs.

[79] Jones' paranoia and drug abuse increased in Jonestown as he became fearful of a government raid on the commune, citing concerns that the community would not be able to resist an attack.

[82] He made frequent addresses to Temple members regarding Jonestown's safety, including statements that U.S. intelligence agencies were conspiring with "capitalist pigs" to destroy the settlement and harm its inhabitants.

The panic reached such a point that an ad hoc evacuation was ordered by Jones, with dozens of settlers hastily loaded onto boats on the George River for a purported exodus to Cuba.

"[93] Jonestown rallies began to take an almost surreal tone as black activists Angela Davis and Huey Newton communicated via radio-telephone to the settlers, urging them to hold strong against the "conspiracy.

[98] Sharon Amos, Michael Prokes, Matthew Blunt, Timothy Regan[99] and other Temple members took active roles in the "Guyana-Korea Friendship Society," which sponsored two seminars on the revolutionary concepts of Kim Il-sung.

[120] Audio tapes of 1978 meetings exhibit Jones complaining of high blood pressure, small strokes, weight loss of thirty to forty pounds within the span of two weeks, temporary blindness, convulsions and, in his final month, grotesque swelling of the extremities.

[126] Because of lack of room on the plane, only four of the Concerned Relatives – Anthony Katsaris, Beverly Oliver, Jim Cobb and Carol Boyd – accompanied Ryan, Speier and the journalists to Port Kaituma and ultimately to Jonestown.

It was felt that the presence of the Stoens would unnecessarily antagonize Jones, and Harris wanted to remain in Georgetown because he hoped to spend time with his daughter Liane, who was staying at the Temple's headquarters there.

[134] In the early morning of November 18, eleven Temple members sensed danger enough to walk out of Jonestown and all the way to the town of Matthew's Ridge, in the opposite direction from the Port Kaituma airstrip.

[155] When the tractor neared within approximately 30 feet (9 m) of Ryan's party, at a time roughly concurrent with the shootings on the Cessna, the Red Brigade opened fire with handguns, shotguns and rifles while at least two shooters circled the plane on foot.

[158] Speier, Reiterman, Katsaris, Steve Sung, Richard Dwyer, Charles Krause, Ron Javers, Carolyn Houston Boyd and Beverly Oliver were the nine injured in and around the Twin Otter.

"[165] Such an act had been hypothesized by Jones as far back as the Temple's existence in San Francisco and, according to Jonestown defectors, its theory was "you can go down in history, saying you chose your own way to go, and it is your commitment to refuse capitalism and in support of socialism.

[165] When the Red Brigade members came back to Jonestown after Ryan's murder, Tim Carter, a Vietnam War veteran, recalled them having the "thousand-yard stare" of weary soldiers.

[174] His death was caused by a gunshot wound to his left temple that Guyanese Chief Medical Examiner Leslie Mootoo stated was consistent with being self-inflicted.

[198] Larry Layton, who had fired a gun at several people aboard the Cessna, was initially found not guilty of attempted murder in a Guyanese court, employing the defense that he was "brainwashed.

Layton could not be tried in the U.S. for the attempted murders of Gosney, Bagby, Dale Parks and the Cessna pilot on Guyanese soil and was, instead, tried under a federal statute against assassinating members of Congress and internationally protected people (Ryan and Dwyer).

The group, which included Ryan's daughter Patricia, was involved in various personal, social and legal battles with a range of religious organizations, from The Family International and Scientology to David Koresh's Branch Davidians, where they were found to be influential on law enforcement's concerns for children in the eventual Waco siege in 1993.

In late February 1980, Al and Jeannie Mills (co-founders of the Concerned Relatives) and their daughter Daphene were shot and killed execution style in their Berkeley, California, home.

[223] During a visit to tape a segment for the ABC news show 20/20 in 1998, Jim Jones Jr. discovered the rusting remains of an oil drum near the former entrance to the pavilion.

[224] In 2003, with the help of Gerry Gouveia, a pilot involved with the Jonestown cleanup, a television crew recording a special for the 25th anniversary of the event returned to the site to uncover any remaining artifacts.