Jonestown: The Paradise Built So No One Could Leave

On 18 November 1978, U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan arrived at a small airstrip in Guyana to take people home from Jonestown. Families had told him that relatives were being held in an isolated religious settlement in the jungle. They described forced work, beatings, confinement, and rehearsals for a mass suicide. Ryan wanted to see the place for himself.

The visit lasted only a few days. Some members of the Peoples Temple secretly handed notes to Ryan’s delegation asking to leave. As the group prepared to board planes at Port Kaituma, armed followers of Jim Jones arrived and shot Ryan and four others. Several journalists were wounded. The people trying to leave ran into the forest.