Murder With Friends: Jonestown

In Membership, Murder With Friends - On Demand by Gigi Manukyan27 Comments

Musician Jack Ruler and Murder With Friends executive producer, Amir Nikoui, return to discuss the Jonestown Massacres with host, Grace Baldridge. They discuss the leader of Jonestown and Methodist preacher, Jim Jones. The trio also analyze the appeal of the Peoples Temple.

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  1. I found the music video on Youtube for Fuckwitch, but I seriously cannot find them anywhere else. I absolutely loved the music video, and I really want to hear more. Please help me find more of their music!

  2. Given the right conditions, this can happen again. All it takes is a hopeless population looking to someone, or something, to be their beacon of hope. Look at Trump’s followers, despite all that he has messed up, they still believe in him. Blind faith is something that should not be taken lightly.

  3. he is kind of right about the delegitimizing the government via giving up land. Explains why the US does all it can to squeeze Native peoples off their land…

  4. Does anyone see something like this happening with the Tealers? Teal Swan has a pretty big following and is all about suicide just being a “cosmic reset button.” Check out her YouTube page. It’s scary how entrancing she is…

    1. I checked out Teal’s YouTube and holy crap nearly everything she says makes sense. I didn’t see the part about suicide but disagree. I can see how someone like this could convince someone to murder themselves because the world is beyond repair.

  5. Maybe I am nuts, but I don’t think Jim Jones was evil, or ever had evil intent. I think he started with a real idea of helping ppl, and a real faith. Then he lost his mind and the drugs had a lot to do with that. I don’t even think he shot himself out of fear. I think he just wanted to be sure he died cause he was the last to go. To me this story is fascinating and sad, not evil or serial killer.

  6. When does this show get posted now? It used to be Wednesday’s but last week it was Thursday and now it’s early Friday and no new posts

  7. The Download Audio in this Murder with Friends and others display the following ERROR message:
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  9. Thank you for this Jonestown coverage Grace, Amir and Jack.

    As Grace said, information is the key, social media has made a positive difference for We The People. But what do we do when someone with the voice of Jim Jones makes a cultish following out of one way messaging on social media and gets into the White House??

    I didn’t realize so many died in Jonestown, I was a kid when that happened. But I was a working adult in Tokyo, Japan when the Sarin Gas Incident happened just feet from my house. I used to use one of the subway stations where some of the 12 people died and so many got injured for life, but THAT day the weather was good so I decided to take my motor scooter in to work. Man, when I got there. ‘Karen!! Are you okay??? Have you heard?? What’ll we do?’ And I was like ‘WTF are you guys ON about?’ for half a second before they told me. Talk about your life flashing before your very eyes. It was 1995, pocket receivers but no mobile anything else. My Mom in PA had been trying to reach me all day, phones jammed worldwide over that. When I did reach her she said ‘Come home NOW.’ I didn’t listen to her obviously, writing this from my Tokyo home now.

    The Tokyo Sarin Gas Attack could have easily become another Jonestown. Even now there are followers and heaps of legal issues with the cult leader still alive in jail. This story involves outright murder and Russia as well as mass indoctrination. Maybe you guys could consider doing this one someday.

  11. I actually disagree that Hometown couldn’t happen today. On the contrary, I think that in today’s increasingly divisive political and unequal economic environment it is just as likely as it was then. Look at the parallels. We’re in a post-boom era, similar to the 70’s. Income inequality is at an all time high, and is likely to onky get worse with the Trump administration. Racist and xenophobic ideologies are openly embraced by members of his transition team. So there must also be a counterculture, which brings inclusion and collective well-being to the forefront to oppose the unchecked selfishness of conservative talking points. The Left is looking for leaders again, you can see it with coverage even on TYT. We idolize Bernie, rightfully so, because he’s looking out for us. Yet if someone wanted to and was charismatic enough they could pervert that same sort of message and take advantage of a large group of people. It could happen in one of two ways. Yes, people can be isolated. You mentioned it yourself in regards to the Amish. Technology exists, yes, along with social media for most of us, but most people are not as attached to it as you’d think. A lot of us just put up with the bullshit and annoyance that comes along with social media because it’s inconvenient to do otherwise. Given a cult-likr ideology it’s not hard to imagine a situation in which all members but the leadership, like propaganda teams, forego all of it to live in a communal existence and isolate them. Alternatively, social media and technology can be used to more dangerous degree to spread ideas, as we’ve seen with conspiracy theorists on the “alt right”. Leftests do the same thing, but regardless of political affiliation I think we’re just been lucky that we haven’t seen a situation like Jonestown happen again.

  12. Please fix the audio downloads for this one and the other most recent Murder with Friends. I wanna hear them!

  13. Another great show, thanks, Grace & company.

    Some years ago, I remember reading article about how not everyone at Jonestown took the poison voluntarily. There appeared to have been a “death squad” that went around injecting cyanide into the back of some people’s necks. Empty syringes and needle-marks on the necks of many victims were the evidence. Presumably the death squad killed themselves after making sure that all 900 citizens of Jonestown were dead or dying.

  14. Before Jim Jones moved to San Francisco, he started his cult in the northern California community of Ukiah. This is my hometown and is about 130-miles north of San Francisco. I was in my early 20s in the late 1960s and drove school bus for the local school district. One of the school bus drivers I was friends with was black. He and his family belonged to the cult and he drove one of the converted busses down to the Bay Area to pick up blacks in Oakland, San Francisco and other communities. They would be brought to the facilities in Ukiah for fellowship meetings, it is assumed. No one really knew what went on and the members wouldn’t discuss the subject. I would ride my motorcycle past the “church” on my to work. I always thought it odd that a church was surrounded with an 8-foot high fence topped with barbed wire, locked gates, vicious dogs and later, armed guards. As it turned out, my friend and his family was murdered in the mass suicide. Congressman Leo J. Ryan had offices in San Mateo, CA (a suburb of S.F.) where I now live. Mr. Ryan is remembered with parks and other public areas named for him. I was working and living in the Bay Area in 1978 and was shocked when I saw the graphic scene on the evening news!

    1. Thanks for the info about Ukiah. I live not far from there now. Where was the church located, do you remember?

      I was a student at San Francisco State University when Jonestown happened. Remember it unfolded in two different news stories — first we were all aghast at the murder of Ryan and others. Then… within a day, news of the 900 dead. The whole city was in a state of shock. Everywhere you went, people looked dazed, traumatized. Then… just ten days later, I was in a camera store on Geary with a radio playing in the background when a news bulletin interrupted to say that Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk had been shot. I’ll never forget that moment, standing at the counter in the camera store, everyone just freezing and staring at the radio. First Ryan, then Jonestown, then the mayor and Milk… WHAT NEXT…?! People were shell-shocked.

      The triple-whammy of Ryan, Jonestown and the Moscone-Milk double murder made that holiday season in San Francisco a surreal experience.

      1. Deb-n-NCal . . . Looking at Google Maps refreshed my memory. The church was actually in Redwood Valley, north of the city of Ukiah. The church was located on East Rd. in Redwood Valley north of Calpella. There is an Assembly of God church there now. From Google Maps, you can see the large church building and the super large paved area where they stored the busses. I passed there and turned onto East School Way. There was a bus barn and fueling facilities at the Redwood Valley School where the school bus I drove was located. I lived with my folks on Eastside Calpella Rd. We were about a mile from the dam and Lake Mendocino.
        Hope this helps.
        Dave

        1. Thanks Dave, I will definitely check it out on my next trip in that direction. Redwood Valley is home to many religious communities (a little known fact). VERY serious, dedicated, low-profile cloistered communities from every religious denomination, including Tibetan monks. These groups do not advertise their presence. People may travel 6,000 miles to join one, while neighbors a half mile away don’t even know its there. Fascinating.

  17. ‘Fuckwitch’ lol everybody had a straight face so I don’t even know anymore when they are messing around or are legit

  18. I’m so glad that you did a show about Jonestown. It’s been on my mind recently and the current parallels are all too clear. Can’t wait to dive into this episode!

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  22. Great episode! The most heartbreaking and chilling thing about that final recording is hearing the baby babbling in the background.

    I don’t think it’s as far fetched as you think it might be to happen again, and on a much bigger scale. I grew up in a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The entire reason that we didn’t grow up on an Indian Reservation was because of my family’s religious beliefs. I lost so much of my culture, but I managed to get back to it in my adult years.

    My brother and I were atheists by the time we hit 16-17 because we read the Bible front to back, and realized how stupid it was (we also found that many Bible stories came from older stories about gods or other people, and the ones in the Bible just changed the names to fit their narrative. There is an astounding amount of plagiarism in the Bible. My father admitted to us soon afterward that he was agnostic. My older sister also became agnostic, but fell back into the fold after she got married because she was lonely. (She married a creepy jerk.)

    Very recently, my younger sister and her husband (who was an elder) became very alarmed at the tone of the teachings they were getting from Watchtower (those who run Jehovah’s Witnesses globally). They were told that they should be prepared to go against their own morals AND the teachings they had followed all these years. They were told that “dark times” were fast approaching, and that they should report on any fellow Witnesses who were not following mandates. Just a whole bunch of paranoia and ominous shit. Thankfully, they left the “religion” and have become atheists. But my mother and older sister (and my niece) are still in it. I really wouldn’t be surprised if the Witnesses pulled some Jim Jones crap in the coming decade. They are growing increasingly more paranoid, and asking for unwavering, unquestioning loyalty. And there are millions of Witnesses worldwide. It’s terrifying to think about.

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