Come, let me tell you of someone who heals,
who does miracles like none other does.
The more you see of god in me, the more I can reproduce in you.
Welcome to "very scary people."
I'm Donnie wahlberg.
More than 900 people died there.
The youngest victim was just 5 weeks old.
The oldest was 97,
and the man responsible was Jim Jones.
Wildly charismatic, for decades Jones was idolized by his flock,
but he used his church as a way to con people with phony cures
and take their money.
He sexually abused his followers
and was obsessed with death, disturbing behavior
that traces all the way back to his childhood.
A man of extraordinary contradictions
and seemingly unlimited gifts, Jones could have done anything,
but what he chose to do is almost unimaginable.
Good evening. We're interrupting our special
broadcasting to bring you this special report.
We here at nbc news have been trying to establish
what happened last night.
I remember him saying he was god.
Let's fill this atmosphere with warmth and love.
Bodies are strewn all over the place.
I was a zealot. I believed it.
The word on everybody's lips was, "shades of Auschwitz."
Love is a healing remedy.
The death toll is rising as more bodies are being found.
I also have to warn you that what you're about
to see almost defies description.
I maintain to be and declare to be your only savior!
How do you think history will eventually
come to see your father?
I don't care.
I'm really not sure what the end was for my father, what...
If there was a great, grand plan.
What I saw my father doing is shooting
from the hip much of the time, and he was managing perception.
I shall do all the miracles that you said
your god would do and never did.
- Yes! - Yes!
Jones became a master performer as a preacher,
and he gravitated towards
the pentacostalist style of preaching,
and in doing so, he embraced faith healing.
He didn't have the power to heal,
and therefore we need to fake these healings.
Now, is the pain gone?
He would do this thing where he would say,
"lean your head back. Close your eyes."
Put his hands in your mouth,
and it wasn't cancer he was pulling out of you.
What he was putting in your mouth
was fermented chicken parts.
Deceit is pernicious, and it started back then.
Jim Jones was supposedly a good man gone bad.
It couldn't be farther from the truth.
Jim Jones was born in a little town called.
Crete, Indiana, in 1931.
Crete was, Just a dot on the map.
Had three or four houses, a green elevator,
and a railroad track, that was it.
In 1931, Indiana is almost a century
behind a lot of the rest of america.
It's about the whitest area in america you can find.
The ku klux klan has been sort of forced out of the south
and has made Indiana it's new stronghold.
It's very conservative, very religious.
He was born to a relatively poor couple.
It was in the middle of the great depression
which was a time when poor people certainly had trouble
making the ends meet.
Jim Jones' father, also named Jim Jones,
is a world war I veteran.
His mother, lynetta Jones,
was the sort of spirit of the family.
Lynetta is bold. She's brassy.
She's pushy.
His parents lost their farm when he was a toddler,
so he was raised in nearby Lynn, Indiana.
He has a mother who is resentful of her working-class place
in life and tells him, even as a toddler,
"you are going to be the greatest man ever.
You were born to be great."
Jones stood out among others of his peers as a child
as someone who was precocious.
He'd cuss up a storm.
He was much smarter than the rest of us kids.
But even at age 10 or 11, Jim Jones had a dark side.
During world war ii, German pows were sent to Lynn.
I remember one occasion, up pulls a greyhound bus,
and the first guy out was carrying a carbine
followed by about 10 or 12 tall men,
and on the back of their coveralls was, "pow."
And I'll never forget, this one patted
Jimmy on the head and he said something in German.
These were German war prisoners.
Jimmy turned around and said, "heil Hitler."
He's fixated on Adolf Hitler,
how Hitler can stand in front of huge crowds
and just by force of personality make them worship him
and follow him, and Jones actually admired
Hitler committing suicide at the end
rather than letting all his enemies parade him around
and feel triumphant in front of him.
And the other kids all thought he was strange,
so nobody wanted to be his friend.
I heard a lot of stories about dad
feeling like an outcast as a child.
I suspect that to some he was very attractive
and others he was odd.
Jim Jones, from childhood, is also a con artist.
He manages, in this small town, to convince all kinds of people
that he's still a lost little waif,
and he'll be invited in for meals.
And he will tell the lady serving him that meal
he's never had better food,
that he just loves her like a mama,
that she's been so kind to him, and they all just melt.
Dad knew how to win someone over pretty quickly,
knew how to adapt to any situation.
Little Jimmy is fascinated by religion.
He joins the nazarene church,
and then he joins the methodists.
Then he's over there with the baptists.
He would organize pretend church services with friends.
He would be the minister. They would be the followers.
They would be listening and nodding along.
He would go out in the woods and practice
giving his own services,
and he would hold funeral services for roadkill.
By the time he's a teenager, he's the one boy in town
who goes to every church service
and walks around carrying a Bible.
With pentecostal services,
he found this sense of belonging.
Jimmy would go up.
Every Sunday, he would go up and get saved,
and I always thought that was a little weird, too.
Pentecostalism, at its origins, was racially integrated,
and that's something that was very important to Jones.
He was never part of the accepted in crowd,
the social elite as he called it.
He felt a tremendous resentment towards people
that he regarded as having more power, more privilege,
and more money than he had.
By the time Jones was in high school,
he was pretty set on what he wanted to do.
He wanted to be a preacher, but not just a local preacher.
He wanted to change the world.
He would gain information by searching garbage cans
or talking to their neighbors.
It would seem like he's reading minds.
All he's doing is eavesdropping.
By 1948, there were early shades of who he would become,
he was charismatic, he was confident,
but he was somewhat rough around the edges,
a small-town character, but he had a pretty big
chip on his shoulder.
It was fortunate, met the one woman who could really take him
further than any place he wanted to be.
That was marceline Baldwin.
Marceline Baldwin, the daughter of a city councilman,
was considered the most wonderful girl in town.
When she entered a room, she commanded respect.
She had panache, but not in a pompous way.
I think mom enjoyed that dad was brash.
She was definitely giving this young
whippersnapper the cold shoulder for awhile
because mom was 4 years older than dad.
One of the ways dad made himself more attractive to mom
was to talk about his religious background
and his desire to be a minister.
They married in June 1949, and it was a double wedding.
My father and mother were married in the same ceremony.
She is convinced that she has married a special man
who will do special things,
and as he begins an independent ministry in Indianapolis,
she decides she will simply devote herself to him.
His first church was incorporated
under the name wings of deliverance.
Jim Jones was 23 years old when he set up this church
with mostly a poor African-American following.
Segregation very much was alive and firmly
implanted in Indianapolis, like it was in many cities.
There was an active ku klux klan nearby.
There was a racial divide in the city,
and Jones was very bothered by that.
I think dad genuinely cared about doing the right thing,
but that was always snarled with his deep need for approval.
He began to be unorthodox in his sermons.
He was incorporating kind of a political stance
on the world's situation.
At first, he tried to transform himself
into marceline's dream man, but then differences
began to emerge.
He's difficult.
He will not tolerate any views other than his own.
Mom started to see that dad was not all he said he was.
Mom was in conflict from early on.
She was the first victim to fall prey to Jim,
his public persona,
the first victim of Jim figuring out
what somebody needed to see and hear.
My family thought he was a little odd,
I have to admit, a little strange,
but he had an air of authority, and he was very charismatic.
By 1955, his church is growing substantially.
This was a church that would reach out to people
who were in need.
If someone's sewer line broke,
then other members of the church would come over and help.
If there were people who were hungry,
the soup kitchen would feed them.
But for his ministry in the early days,
Jones needs money.
He can't get it from his parishioners
in inner-city Indianapolis.
They don't have any, so he goes out on the revival circuit.
Pentecostal services focused on faith healing
and on salvation.
He sees quickly that the large crowds
and the big donations come when people work miracles.
He would use the age-old practice of discernment.
That is, being able to tell the future or tell things
about people's past that nobody else knew,
and he would gain that information
by searching garbage cans or talking to their neighbors.
Then he can get up and he can start doing mind-reading things.
And it would seem like he's reading minds.
All he's doing is eavesdropping.
Jones began to use theatrics
to ritually portray his success at faith healing.
He had people on his staff who would...
Would feign being sick, an old lady,
and would leap out of a chair.
In the second row, you have a bad spinal condition.
Step from your wheelchair!
Again, step from your wheelchair!
Take that step!
Bless your heart. Take that step!
Now... now, move forward. Move forward!
He would have people who said they were blind who could see.
All these sort of tricks of the trade that he had heard
other razzle-dazzle preachers had used, he would use.
He's already inculcating in his followers the idea
that sometimes you have to do things
that seem wrong to achieve the greater purpose.
He said the Bible was false,
and he threw it on the floor and stepped on it.
By the 1950s, Jim Jones is out on the revival circuit,
and he's quite successful,
but he's using lies to drum up donations and supporters.
So the ends justify the means.
Lying to people by doing phony, fake healing,
it will help people have more faith,
so therefore it's a good thing to do.
The more attention Jim Jones gets, the more influence he has.
He's never going to be satisfied.
He wants more.
He was so consumed with furthering his name
and constantly feeding that need for adulation.
But while Jim was really focused on the church,
marceline wanted to have a family,
and so she had this idea
of adopting children of different races,
calling it a rainbow family,
to live out the church's ideas of racial equality.
They first adopt a couple of Korean orphans.
They adopt a black baby, the first white couple
in Indianapolis to adopt a black infant,
and they name this child Jim Jones Jr.
Marceline discovers she's pregnant.
They had one child themselves, a son named Stephan.
I love my family, but what I've come to believe
about the rainbow family is that too much of it
was about the statement from dad's point of view.
Too much of it was about show.
In 1956, they bought the church at 10th and Delaware
which was a Jewish temple.
It became known as peoples temple.
Peoples was the idea that this is not just one people,
not just one race, not just one ethnicity.
A black man would not be allowed to say that,
and to hear a white man
saying those things, that definitely stood out.
I was born into peoples temple.
Early as a child, our mother just coming home
and telling us all about this church
and this man that was different, like no other.
In Indianapolis, black people simply can't eat
at the nice restaurants.
Jones will show up at a restaurant
with a couple black people.
"We'd like to come in." "Well, no.
You know, we don't have any room for you."
And he would point out, "look, there's
these empty seats."
And then he'd start saying, "you know,
it would really be a good thing for you if you integrate.
You'll make more money."
And he doesn't use force.
He's a very persuasive guy.
Eventually the Indianapolis restaurants gave in,
allowing both black and white customers
to sit and eat together.
He essentially integrates
one of the most segregationist big cities in america.
If Jim Jones had been hit by a car
and killed on his way from Indiana to California,
we would remember him today as one of the leaders
of the early civil rights movement.
He's drawn crowds and developed a name for himself
as a minister, but like all good con men,
it was a bait and switch.
He changed the message.
He said the Bible was false
and nobody needed to read the Bible anymore,
and he threw it on the floor and stepped on it.
Dad's number one objective was to be number one
to anyone in his world,
and people's religion got in the way of him
being number one to them,
so that would be a major reason dad
would have a problem with the Bible and christianity.
This is in the midst of the cold war.
He's talking about socialism and communism.
It was all pretty revolutionary.
Jones' resentment of elites and monied people
was something that dovetailed with his political communism.
He would wear the same shoes, same cheap slacks, cotton shirt,
and he never owned a car.
In the 1950s in america, when the cold war
is ratcheting up, all across this country
there is the great fear of nuclear war.
Russia has the bomb.
And more and more Americans believe
that nuclear war is inevitable, including Jim Jones.
Back then, nuclear war was on everyone's mind,
and I guess he read some article and said that the place
that would be least likely to be bombed
or whatnot would be redwood valley, west coast.
Going to California brought the church to an entirely new level.
The more you surrender to the group,
the more the group identity takes over.
It really is the end of a traditional ministry,
and it starts to move in the direction of becoming a cult.
Welcome back to "very scary people."
Jim Jones has tossed the Bible from his sermons
and begun to call himself the savior.
Many of his followers are convinced
he can cure diseases and read minds.
By the mid-1960s, there are ominous signs
that the peoples temple
is turning from a religious movement into a cult.
The congregation believes they're working
toward a utopian paradise,
but in reality, it's the beginning of a nightmare.
In the summer of 1965 around 70 families
made the trip out to mendocino county
and ultimately settling
in the little Hamlet of redwood valley.
The first thing that I recognized
was that some guy arrived with three busloads of people.
There were mixed families, and we hadn't had that.
Shell shock, totally different because it was all white people.
What Jones never factored in
was it's pretty much redneck-white country,
and they will not welcome peoples temple with open arms,
and he gets there and essentially
has to start rebuilding again.
They went out and got good jobs.
They contributed to the community.
They seemed to care about the people
that were having problems.
Jones does in redwood valley what he did in Indianapolis.
He begins to meet with local officials
and to make a name for himself.
He came to my office when I was running for local schoolboard.
He told me that I wasn't going to have any problem
getting elected to the position, because I was being supported
by the peoples temple and would I like to join?
Peoples temple began to attract a new middle
and upper-middle-class contingent of whites.
There were real estate brokers.
There were lawyers. There were social workers.
There were accountants.
Boy, when he got up on...
He could just off the cuff preach and light you up.
He really could.
California at that time in the mid-'60s,
the culture was ripe for disenfranchised
and a disillusioned people,
anti-war, Vietnam, anti-government.
I came out in march of 1970.
People thought that Jim Jones had kind of a socialist group.
He was a minister, but he would talk from the pulpit
about how he had spoken to Angela Davis or Cesar Chavez.
He was one of the first ones to say,
you know, you could be gay or straight,
and so in many ways he was out front
in being vocal about human rights.
I first met Jones in Seattle, Washington.
I was living there with my wife, Cheryl.
We were an interracial couple,
estranged from our families, and we were embraced.
It was warm. It was welcoming.
It was interracial.
There was all different kinds of people there.
I moved in with nothing.
I had no money, so Jim took me in,
gave me housing and everything, and I lived communally.
I turned in my paycheck.
As his membership grows, Jones begins to demand more
when it comes to tithing, 10 percent, then 20 percent.
It really is the end of a traditional ministry,
and it starts to move in the direction of becoming a cult.
Cults will often ask members to give over their money,
their paychecks, their houses, the cars to the cause,
and, of course, the more you surrender to the group,
the more the group identity takes over.
There was definitely a call for conformity
immediately upon coming to the temple.
You got your hair cut.
You were supposed to dress a certain way.
You're... basically, whatever persona you had
before you came to the temple was molded
into a kind of a cookie-cutter appearance.
It's really about separating people from their past lives
to this control of their thoughts and their feelings.
Jones began to warn his group about outsiders.
It became sort of an us versus them.
Us against them would create fear in us,
and that's the way a raging ego thinks.
"If you don't agree with me, you're against me.
If you're against me, you're the enemy."
This community became tighter, more suspicious,
more dedicated to the cause.
There were 60 or 70 of us
who were on the planning commission,
and we'd stay up all night, like, every Wednesday night.
There were services on Wednesday nights,
Friday nights, Saturday, Sunday.
You, as an adult, were not to fall asleep during the service.
Then it got to be status.
"Well, how much sleep did you have last night?"
"Two hours."
"Well, I only had an hour and 45."
So, it got so that, to show how dedicated you were,
you got less and less and less sleep,
which really fit right into Jim's plan.
Another universal manipulation by cult leaders
to do mind control is sleep deprivation.
Their critical faculties are not going to be functioning.
Their memory is going to be impaired.
Their immune systems will break down.
One of Jim's secretaries,
he told her that if you keep people tired
and you keep them poor, nobody will ever leave.
Jim Jones' rules became stricter.
He began to monitor everything from a person's romantic lives
to the type of food they were eating.
And when anyone broke a rule,
there was a public accounting of their sins.
One woman wrote him a love letter saying,
"I love you.
I want to be with you. I will always follow you."
She was very enamored of Jim Jones
and was bothering him about it,
so at one of the planning commission meetings,
he ordered her to strip naked.
He said, "look at you.
Why would I ever be attracted to you anyway?"
He led the group in mocking her body
and then made her sit naked even longer
before he finally allowed her to dress herself.
He just completely demeaned her.
And then the next day, she wrote him a note
apologizing for having done the terrible things
that made him do that.
It's sending a message to everyone else.
"You better tow the line and do what we tell you.
Otherwise it could be you next."
I thought, "this man who's supposed to be so loving,
how could he look at her and say the things that he said,"
you know, "about her?"
I mean, it was so cruel.
It's like being in a relationship
and being in love and everything's wonderful
and it's good, and then you notice,
"well, there's something that's not quite right,"
but you ignore it because you're in love
and you want the dream.
There were a couple of times, and more than once,
me walking in on him with a man or a woman, you know, in bed.
He is, in a sense, now a sexual predator.
Now... now with each of you
giving a fond embrace,
let's fill this atmosphere with warmth and love.
By 1972, Jones' ministry had expanded into Los Angeles
and San Francisco,
and it had really become the poster boy
for community engagement.
The church was bringing in more educated and affluent members,
people who were really looking for the equal life
that he had promised.
Jim Jones becomes the darling of the glitterati.
Jane Fonda writes him fan letters,
and then all the popular revolutionaries at the time,
like Angela Davis, now they're coming to the meetings.
He's building what he couldn't build in Indianapolis,
which is not just a religious empire but political clout.
During a close election, our votes could make a difference.
We had met rosalynn Carter, the mayor, city council,
legislators, lieutenant governor.
They all came through our doors and to court our vote.
And it was amazing that this man could get
into a community and influence intelligent people.
That's really scary.
He was appointed by the mayor to be on the housing authority,
which runs public housing in the city.
He was made president.
I was the city hall reporter for the "San Francisco chronicle."
I went to the meetings.
He would show up and fill this fairly small meeting room
with all of his folks.
Anything he would do would get this thunderous ovation.
Jones understands that power comes from numbers,
and he's really trying to bring in new people
from all walks of life.
I was in Los Angeles at the time,
and Jim was at an auditorium
where he was holding his meetings,
and I went up there with my daughter,
and I thought, "okay, I'll sit here for a few minutes."
Jim was talking about people in bad relationships,
and what he said was that women
shouldn't have to put up with that.
And that kind of hooked me.
I thought, "oh, okay, a man's saying this."
He's a chameleon.
He can see what he needs to be and he becomes that.
He said that all women should be treated equally,
but he really didn't practice what he preached.
Marceline has her back give out.
She's completely unable to satisfy Jim sexually.
He announces to their children that,
since mom can't do this for him anymore,
he's going to have to have someone else.
He began engaging in sexual relations with other people.
The most famous instance of that is Carolyn Moore Layton.
When I was still a boy, maybe 10,
I met a woman that was strange to me.
Her name was Carolyn Layton,
and we spent the evening with them.
We had dinner.
It was clear to me dad was just lit up by her.
I was put on a sofa that night,
and they were in the very next room,
and I heard, you know, what was going on in there.
I had no idea what it was.
At first, I thought it was animals,
the sounds I was hearing, and then I realized it was them.
Those with the faith really loved marceline,
and she was... She was really a sweet person.
If it turns out that Jim is being unfaithful to her,
that's going to hurt him with some of his followers,
and he knows it, so you've got to keep up this charade
that marceline is a coequal partner.
Mom never lost her grace, but life in the temple
as the wife of Jim Jones certainly wore her down.
Marceline is a tragic figure.
We ask ourselves, was she also his great enabler?
In some ways she was.
That was a time where you stand by and slightly behind your man.
He wasn't going to let her off the hook
because you couldn't leave Jim Jones.
Most members were unaware of Jim Jones' infidelity,
but he had bigger problems to worry about
that were very difficult to hide.
He turns to drugs, and Jones becomes a habitual user
and, frankly, addicted to drugs.
Trouble sleeping, you take some pills.
Trouble waking up, you take some more.
Dark glasses all the time; Indoors, outdoors,
night or day.
With the increase in use in drugs
comes something else.
He is less circumspect about some of his own moral behavior.
He begins having sex with members of his congregation,
mostly young women who feel honored
that father is sharing this with them, and sometimes with men.
It turns out he's bisexual and has been all his life,
but he is, in a sense, now a sexual predator.
Dad's message to anybody he was sexual with
was because they needed it or they coerced him to do it,
but it was always a great burden for him
to be sexual with someone, and I knew that was a lie.
He was basically just really exploiting people sexually.
Power, money, and sex seems to be the universal
of what cult leaders are going after.
Like all drug addicts,
particularly the ones who use speed,
that just increases his personal paranoia.
Jones' paranoia will prove to be very dangerous
to members of the peoples temple.
There was a shot, and he fell to the ground.
Everybody was screaming and running.
"Father's been shot! Father's been shot!"
In 1972, when Jim was doing a service up in redwood valley,
he was out walking on the grounds.
And so at the lunch break, Jim Jones is out mingling,
as he likes to do, and everyone else is eating.
There was a shot, and he fell to the ground.
Everybody was screaming and running.
His chief lieutenants, who were screaming,
"father's been shot! Father's been shot!"
And everyone jumps up and is looking.
"Where did the shot come from?"
Jim Jones is gently picked up by his followers
and taken into his house,
which is right by the church, to die.
Everybody else went back inside.
It felt like we were kind of sheltered.
And everyone waits.
"Father is going to be dead."
They're waiting for this terrible word,
and instead, in walks Jim Jones just fine,
wearing a different shirt.
He showed his shirt.
It had blood and a bullet hole where he said he had been shot,
and he said he had healed himself.
- That's right! - That's right!
And he opens his shirt so you can look at his chest
and see that there's no wound, just some little sort of dent.
But the minute I saw that, I knew,
"okay, something's up here."
Because I no longer believed he had the power
to completely make a bullet wound go away.
You're just totally full of it at this point.
He created this myth that you didn't have to believe
everything he did because part of it was for drama.
- Yes! - Yeah!
As to why they faked that shooting,
he was now supremely the center of attention.
He was elated because he saw how distraught everyone was
when they thought they had lost him.
Even if the danger to him had been faked,
it began to feel very real to the people who had crossed him.
And it was 1 in the morning,
and I was in planning commission,
and I kept nodding off.
Finally, somebody shook me and said, "Laura," woke me up,
and Jim was pointing a gun at me,
and he said, "Laura, if you nod off one more time,
I'm going to shoot you."
For some members, the theatrics,
the erratic behavior had worn thin.
I thought, "no, I... this is not for me.
This is just not for me."
I left April of '76, so I was out.
I was done.
Any defection to Jim Jones was a big loss.
Dad was obsessed with loyalty, for sure.
There was a part of dad always that knew he was running a game.
Perhaps the biggest loss for Jones
were the defections of grace and Tim stoen.
Tim stoen was the attorney for peoples temple.
Grace was Tim's estranged wife,
but she had become one of Jones' high-profile lovers
within the church.
Grace stoen had had a child.
Somewhere along the way,
it was corroborated that that child, John stoen,
was sired by my father.
Jones insisted the child stay with him.
It was a way to stay in control,
even as things were deteriorating around him.
Grace and other defectors began talking to members of the media
about what was taking place at the temple.
Found some folks who had left the church
because they were unhappy,
and they said that the church takes everybody's money,
that the church overworks its people,
that the church beats up or humiliates people
who get out of line, like us.
It's really kind of a snake pit.
It's not this warm and fuzzy social-action group
that it purports to be.
Yes!
Jones wanted to test the loyalty of his planning commission.
These are the people that are really supposed
to be most with him, and one night in San Francisco,
at a planning commission meeting,
Jones announces there's a treat.
"Everyone have a cup of wine."
We never had any refreshments at planning commission.
We usually just go there and sit and listen, so we all drank it.
And when everyone's done, he announces it's poison.
It's lethal, and they're all going to die within 45 minutes.
He said, "we're going to commit revolutionary suicide."
And some of them are crying.
You know, "I don't want to die. I don't want to die."
At exactly 45 minutes, Jim Jones announces there was no poison.
Everybody's fine.
He was testing us to see how that was going to play.
If he had handed out poison to people,
were people going to just trust and drink it?
I never believed dad would go through with it.
I thought it was a big game for him
and he was testing loyalty
and just creating drama, which fed him in a way.
Of course, looking back, you see it was grooming us
for what was going to happen on November 18th.
That was the call of death.
Jim Jones was at a crossroads.
By the mid-1970s, California politicians
knew him as an influential minister
capable of swinging an election.
To most of his followers, he was a godlike presence
that controlled nearly every aspect of their lives,
but Jones was now addicted to drugs,
sexually abusing church members,
and defectors were starting to talk to the press.
Jim Jones was losing control of himself,
his family and his followers, but Jones had a plan,
one that would horrify the world.
Next time on "very scary people,"
the final terrifying days of the peoples temple.
I'm Donnie wahlberg.
Thanks for watching.