30 Years Later, Jonestown Journalist Interview

Journalist Tim Reiterman began investigating Reverend Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple cult, for the San Francisco Chronicle 18 months before Jones burst on the world’s stage 30 years ago.

TIME: Do you think that the 900 deaths that immediately followed were suicides, or were they murders?

I believe that this was a mass murder. First of all, there were over 200 children who could not have formed the intent to commit suicide. Second, Jim Jones had isolated his people and conditioned them through suicide rehearsals and mock sieges to accept death…

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