Killer Cults by The Editors of TIME-LIFE

Author:The Editors of TIME-LIFE [The Editors of TIME-LIFE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TI Inc. Books
Published: 2015-07-24T20:30:00+00:00

VISIONS OF DEATH Bodies lay on the Port Kaituma airstrip beside the plane intended to carry Congressman Leo Ryan and his party back to Georgetown.

Ryan in a photo made just minutes before the shooting attack that ended his life. The photographer, Greg Robinson of the Examiner, was also killed.

Ryan at Jonestown with the Houston family, who lived and died in Guyana.

THE PUNCH Surrounded by the bodies of the deceased sat a vat of cyanide-laced punch. This photo ran on the cover of TIME on December 4, 1978.

THE PRICE OF TRAGEDY

The grisly remains of Jonestown’s dead were brought to the U.S. and stacked tidily in coffin-like aluminum transfer cases in a huge gray hangar at Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base.

But the tragic saga of Jonestown was far from over. While teams of military pathologists, FBI technicians and civilian embalmers worked to identify the corpses and prepare them for burial or cremation, the condition of the remains and the lack of fingerprint records for many victims meant the process was slow—and in many cases futile.

Politics and money also came into play. At least two fiscally conservative congressmen—Illinois Republican Philip Crane and Rhode Island Democrat Edward Beard—protested the use of public funds, roughly $8 million, according to early estimates, to pay for the repatriation. “[T]he responsibility to bring the loved ones back to the United States rests with the families, not the federal government,” said Crane.

One suggestion: seize the cash, property and other assets of the cult. In 1978, the temple’s longtime lawyer, Charles Garry, said assets in Guyana might be used for this purpose but not those in the U.S. “I don’t intend to let them get away with that,” said Garry, “It’s an ongoing church.” The posturing was moot: the temple declared bankruptcy toward the end of 1978. With several pending lawsuits, Gerry petitioned to dissolve the People’s Temple on Dec. 4, 1978.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.