(intense music)
I was born into Peoples Temple in 1960.
Our family was very close the Jones family.
I lived in their home.
Once we got our church in San Francisco, and his power grew,
that power started to create a different person.
He had a lot of legal problems.
He had to get out of the U.S. fast.
That's what started the mass exodus to Jonestown.
When I got there, it was amazing, it was like the jungle.
Jim Jones became a prisoner of Jonestown.
He clearly did not want to be there.
He was heavily on drugs.
Very paranoid, schizophrenic.
He told myself and a couple of his other sons
that we would be his 24 hour personal guard.
We carried weapons.
When Leo Ryan and his group showed up,
I was actually in the capital in Georgetown.
When he asked us to come back, we told him no.
That's why today, that's my largest regret in life.
I know the men that shot congressman Ryan and Jackie Speier.
They were members.
I cannot tell you for sure where the cyanide came from,
how it got there.
I certainly didn't think it was to kill people.
The first thing he did is when they came back
from the airstrip, he told the members,
we're all in trouble.
It's over, we have no hope.
We'll just murder the congressmen.
They invaded our privacy.
They came into our home.
The congressman's dead.
U.S. government's gonna come here,
they're gonna arrest us, or they're gonna kill us.
They're gonna separate you from your babies.
You must die with some dignity.
So he puts that thought in everybody's head.
He gives his assistants to mix up this poison together,
cyanide or whatnot.
Where's the vat, the vat, the vat?
Where's the vat with the green C?
First thing he does is give it to some children.
Free at last.
Children it will not hurt, if you'll be quiet,
if you'll be quiet.
So many members were not going to walk out at that point.
That's people were weighing on their mind,
and Jim Jones knew that.
I tell you, I don't care how many screams you hear,
I don't care how many anguished cries,
death is a million times preferable
to ten more days of this life.
I lost 11 immediate family members,
and so many close friends.
We've lived as no other people have lived and loved.
We've had as much of this world as you're gonna get.
Let's just be done with it,
let's be done with the agony of it.
(crowd cheering)
It was a very sad thing,
and I say my biggest regret in life to this day,
was not going back when Jim Jones asked.
We would not have allowed it to happen.
Well John, thank you for being here.
Thank you for having me.
What was it like, what was your experience,
being in Jones' inner circle, the way you were?
We were all family.
Two of his sons married two of my sisters.
And that's how I became so close to Jim Jones,
and got to know him in a way
that other people didn't necessarily see.
Were you aware that he was unraveling
and deteriorating mentally and emotionally?
Definitely, definitely.
He was very ill.
As we became his, in charge of his security,
the way it actually happened,
is that a member approached Jim Jones,
and when he was walking one day from his house,
and she approached him, startled him,
and he was actually afraid.
So we heard this loud call over the PA system,
I need my sons up here right away, right away.
We come up there, like, what's going on?
And he said, from now on you guys
are gonna be my personal security.
Do you have mixed emotions?
At this point, is he to you, one of,
if not the worst mass murderer
in the history of the United States,
or is he a loving father figure?
How do you wrap your head around him at this point?
Easily.
He, Jim Jones, there was three phases of Jim Jones.
Indianapolis, Red Wood Valley, he was a different man.
He was the man that people followed.
And he got people interested in what
we were trying to achieve there.
From San Francisco to Guyana
he became a totally different person.
Not someone you'd love, someone you despised, even hate.
Very ill,
on drugs. Why did you stay with him?
Why did you go to Guyana?
I went to Guyana because I was a member
and that's what we, our plans were to do.
My family was going to go to Guyana.
Jim Jones had sold Guyana as a paradise.
Were you aware that you were
following a paranoid schizophrenic at that point?
Not at that point.
Not when we first left, no.
You're in Georgetown
playing in a basketball tournament, right?
Exactly.
And he says come home, and you guys said, no,
and you say that's the biggest regret of your life,
because you say had you gone back,
you could have stopped this.
Had we gone back, I have no doubt that,
that it would not have happened, no doubt.
How would you have stopped it?
Well first of all, it would have came through us.
He would have told us, as he had often told us,
my sons, you're the only ones I really trust.