Jonestown II

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Complaints from former members and several burgeoning investigations revealed financial fraud, mistreatment and abuse of members at the cultish People’s Temple of San Francisco during the mid 1970s. To escape the growing scrutiny, Pastor Jim Jones led about 1,000 followers to Guyana. It didn’t take too long for Jones’ promises of an agricultural Utopia to grow quite stale. Deborah Layton Blakey, a former trusted and key member, part of the inner circle, defected. In June 1978 she signed a 37 point affidavit indicting Jones and Jonestown for inhumane living conditions, drug addiction, coercion, armed guards, torture, brainwashing and most disturbing of all - the threat of a revolutionary mass suicide.