The smell of death and bodies at Jonestown

The fact that nearly everyone who perished was either Caucasian or African-American and they now shared the same color was a strange irony, because the man they followed to their eternal grave, Jim Jones, remained recognizably Caucasian. It was as if members of the Peoples Temple finally achieved a form of equality in death that the evil pastor who masterfully orchestrated their demise did not share. Jim Jones, who preached racial equality from pulpits in Indianapolis to Ukiah and San Francisco all of his life, in the end became the only person in his flock that did not achieve it.

Name tags were sewn into most of the clothing worn by the residents of Jonestown. Unfortunately, the communal lifestyle made for the sharing of wardrobes. Many of the dead wore clothing with three or four different names, none of which actually were their own.

The task of identifying the bodies was more foul than placing the remains into the body bags. During the identification process, bodies had to be individually checked, pockets turned inside-out and any ID bracelets read and recorded. This meant handling and touching each rapidly decomposing remains, many of which already displayed millions of eggs lain by the incredible horde of flies drawn to the scene. Maggots covered the entire area where the Jonestown dead lay.

One common form of life usually found wherever death occurs in the tropics was conspicuously missing from the skies over Jonestown. One can only speculate about the absence of buzzards or vultures. These scavenger birds are as common in the warmer climes as cardinals in Missouri. Perhaps these birds that feed off carrion and keep the environment clean, realized the men, women and children of Jonestown died from the ingestion of a deadly poison. We may never know what caused the buzzards to stay away from Jonestown, but for me, an old tropical soldier and longtime resident of South Texas where the big birds are common, their absence added to the surreal scene.

The first attempts to pick up the bodies by grasping their heads and limbs and lifting them into the body bags more often than not caused a limb or two, or even the head, to become disconnected from the bloated liquid-filled torso. When this happened, a foul, thick, serous fluid would stream from the body part being held by a hapless soldier and an even larger amount would flow from the torso as it landed on the ground. Because the bodies were in such close proximity to one another, it wasn’t long before the soil in Jonestown became a muddy mixture of dirt and smelly body fluids.

In Jonestown there was no escaping the odor. Men and women who a week ago were anticipating a Thanksgiving with family and friends were hard at the job of tagging and bagging bodies where they lay. They then loaded the bags onto the same flatbed trailer used a few days before to carry Peoples Temple assassins to Port Kaituma to kill a congressman and some of his entourage. A tractor then pulled the loaded trailer over 28 miles of dirt road to Matthews Ridge, the only available place to land the helicopters used for the evacuation. The bodies were then placed directly onto the Jolly Green Giants and flown 150 miles to Timehri Airport. They were then put on trucks for a short ride to an area where they would be logged in and – finally – placed in aluminum coffins for transport to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Every hour, the U.S. Army communications specialist in Jonestown radioed the number of bodies that had been bagged in that time. Our U.S. Air Force communications station at Matthews Ridge received the tally and kept a running total, relaying the data to task force headquarters in Timehri Airport.

The first hourly report said fewer than 10 bodies were bagged. A similar count came in for hour number two. Then, when we were expecting the hour three total to come across the radio, Jonestown sent us what we thought was an unusual request.

“Tell HQ we need snow shovels,” was the curt request. Snow shovels? Guyana is a tropical country that has never seen snow. Now they wanted as many snow shovels as we could provide them. A call for six dozen of the cold weather implements was dutifully relayed to the task force headquarters at Timehri Airport. From there the call went out to the U.S. Air Force Base in Charleston, South Carolina. The first shipment of snow shovels reached Jonestown within six hours of the original request.

With the arrival of these simple tools, so alien to this region of the world, the process of placing the rotten remains into body bags was streamlined considerably. Usually six or eight soldiers with the shovels – three or four on each side of the very fragile body – lifted it in unison, a foot or so off of the ground. Two other soldiers then slid an open body bag under the suspended corpse, the snow shovels were lowered, and the remains gently deposited into the body bag.

This procedure sounds simple, but it wasn’t always successful. Body fluids continued to flow freely from orifices and breaks in the skin, creating a gooey, slippery, smelly mess. Sometimes a heavy head, swollen to twice its normal size, slipped from the shovel and fell to the earth with a thud after being severed from the fragile neck.

After employment of the snow shovels, there was a definite and noticeable increase in the GREGG team’s productivity that was reflected in the numbers. By the end of Day One, nearly 100 bodies were evacuated to Timehri Airport.

Much speculation has been made by the original discrepancy in the number of dead. The first released numbers took into account the GDF estimate coupled with the fact that only 400 passports were found. Members of the GREGG team, who had hands-on experience in Jonestown learned how that estimate was so wrong.

It appears the infants and toddlers, who had the poisonous potion forced down their throats by their mothers using needle-less five and ten ml. syringes, represented the biggest uncounted group. Their convulsing bodies were placed on the bottom of a rather large but fairly shallow concave area next to the pavilion. Larger children followed the younger ones in death and lay themselves on top of the little ones. Next came preadolescents and adolescents, making up more layers of victims. Then the teens took their last drink on earth and their place among their friends and siblings who died before them.

While all the younger residents of Jonestown were dying. Jones encouraged some of the mothers to join their offspring, so the distraught parents began joining the deadly act of communion. The senior citizens were the next group Jim Jones commanded to drink the devil’s brew. These people became part of a pile that was not discerned as a pile because of the concavity of the terrain. The last group to participate in the White Night was the able bodied members of the cult, men who had carried out Jones’ dirty work, those who held weapons on the others while forcing them to drink the deadly Flavor Aid. Most of their bodies were found on the periphery of the mass of dead in the concave area.

November 27 marked our last day in Guyana and the official end to the mission that brought more than 200 American servicemen and women to this tropical country that seemed a million miles from home. I stood on the hot tarmac at Timehri Airport, thinking of how this country that I had never heard of before would be remembered by most of my generation. It will always be the place where the Jonestown Massacre happened, at least in my mind.

I watched as the last helicopter that left Jonestown touched down. I remained an observer, as extremely tired and thoroughly stressed out young American soldiers began removing the last remains.

The repetitive robot-like movements of these men and women as they picked up body bags from the helicopter, walked to the tailgate of a nearby truck and deposited their human cargo, was punctuated by their masklike faces, completely devoid of any emotion. Their uniforms were soaked with body fluids and sweat, damaged beyond repair.

As I gazed upon the scene, Colonel Gordon, the gruff no-nonsense joint task force commander approached. “Brailey,” he barked as he returned my salute, “Did y’all bring a psych tech with you from Panama?”

“No sir,” I answered. “Why?”

“They were trying to put that dead go-rilla into a body bag,” he claimed.

Mr. Muggs was a huge chimpanzee Jones kept in a cage near his cottage. It was rumored that small children were placed in the cage with the old primate as a form of punishment.

I had seen Mr. Muggs during my first tour of Jonestown a week earlier. He had been shot to death. That dead chimp smelled much worse than any of the human remains.

Gordon went on, “They kept tryin’ to push that big go-rilla’s shoulders into the body bag, but they just couldn’t get it zipped up. I watched them for a few minutes until one of them graves registration guys was gonna hack its shoulders off with a machete.”

“Hold it, I commanded,” said Colonel Gordon in a loud voice to replicate the one he used in Jonestown, “Why are you gonna hack that go-rilla up?”

“Because he won’t fit into the body bag, sir,” came the respectful reply from the ringleader of the practical jokers.

“But why are you putting him in a body bag anyway?” came the exasperated question of the colonel.

“Why, sir? Why? Just wait until they open this one in Dover!” was the devilish reply of the leering GREGG soldier.

Gordon said he looked down at the group and said, “Look, men, I don’t mind you playin’ a joke on them folks up in Dover. But I won’t let you mutilate that poor go-rilla just to fit him into a body bag.”

Colonel Gordon said he watched the four GREGG soldiers work for several more minutes trying to stuff Mr. Muggs into the bag. Then he walked away, shaking his head and believing Mr. Muggs was left behind in Jonestown.

[italic] (Author’s note: In the first edition of this book, written in 1998, I reported that Mr. Muggs was the only Jonestown resident from the United States who remained in Guyana. I was wrong. The mortuary affairs specialist who opened a body bag at Dover that was occupied by a gorilla told me the truth after he read my book.) [/italic]

Link.

There aren't many jokes about Jonestown. Apparently the punchlines are too long.

One of the strangest and darkest chapters of the '70s.

The US Army History of Jonestown's aftermath:

Closeted queen, Jim Jones, used to fuck men up their asses who were in the cult. If he was out and proud so many people would have been alive today.

this was so horrific. lambs being led to the slaughter much like today.......

Wasn't the smell of death what many recall at Ground Zero right after 9/11? That awful, lingering smell

I was only a young teen in the '70s, but this tragedy sorta felt like it signaled the end of that era, the way people say the Manson murders ushered in the end of the '60s.

Oh California, you never disappoint. Quite the flair for the morbid and dramatic... I'm sure you have a real show-stopper planned for the Trump era!

I don't know if it was the smell of death, per se, r10, but there was this horrible acrid odor that lingered for months.

[quote]They then loaded the bags onto the same flatbed trailer used a few days before to carry Peoples Temple assassins to Port Kaituma to kill a congressman and some of his entourage.

This part freaked me out more than the rest of the story for some reason. I'd never heard this before.

That 100+degree jungle heat plus the decomposition and poison! Yikes! poor clean-up crew

bloated body, ugh

That's Jim Jones.

I didn't know that he, himself, drank the punch..

He didn't but he was surrounded by the bodies of his wife and close followers who did drink it. Jones was shot in the head,

^Shot in the head by his one of his mistresses Annie Moore.

There are tapes of Jones graphically describing to his followers how he fucked men open.

The smell of dead is something that actually last very long, years ago my school did an excursion visiting a concentration camp and one could still smell a strange, cloying scent when we were in a room where the nazis used to store bodies of murdered inmates before they were brought to the crematory.

One of the helicopter pilots who transported Jonestown corpses said it took years to air out the stench of bodies from the helicopters

And they burnt all of the clothes they wore during the clean-up mission

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Just wait, honey R11. You ain't seen nothin yet!

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I heard somewhere that they could tell that most of the people had been very underweight because most of the clothing had not ripped open as the bodies bloated and decayed. If a person dies wearing normal fitting clothes, the clothes will tear open as the body bloats up.

That's a horrible story about children being put in with the chimpanzee. Chimps are terrifying animals, and they shouldn't be in contact with humans.

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Jim Jones worked those poor people14 hours a day in the jungle heat.. can you imagine?

The Jim Jones death tape is horrific

Anyone else see the Escape from Jonestown documentary on CNN in 2008? It was really good. They interviewed the people who lived by running into the jungle after the congressman and others had been shot on the runway.

Back when congressmen had real balls!

Can you imagine these pussies in Congress traveling to Guyana to explore mistreatment of Americans nowadays?

Every time some says "Don't drink the Kool-aid," I have to correct them with "Flavor aid" but it just doesn't have the same flow.

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I smell a movie! "Love Amongst The Putrefaction"

Frank Bielec (from Trading Spaces) as Jeff Brailey

yikes

Is anyone familiar with the relationship between the Jim Jones cult and Harvey Milk?

" ..... upon closer inspection, it is clear that Harvey Milk was a strong advocate for Peoples Temple and Jim Jones during his political career, including the tumultuous year leading up to the Jonestown tragedy. Milk spoke at the Temple often, wrote personal letters to Jim Jones, contacted other elected officials on the Temple’s behalf, and used space in his weekly column to support the works of the Temple, even after the negative New West article went to press. Milk appeared in the pages of the Peoples Forum, the Temple newspaper, and received over fifty letters of sympathy from the residents of Jonestown when his lover, Jack Lira, killed himself in September 1978.

It is readily apparent from the letters and historical memorabilia that Milk and the Temple enjoyed a mutually supportive relationship until their concurrent deaths. Why then is the relationship such a secret, even taboo to discuss? "

I bet Dianne Feinstein has ties to them.

I grew up in the Bay Area and was 9 when the massacre happened. It was awful and shocking. My mother knew some people who belonged to Jim Jones' church. Fortunately they did not follow him to Guyana.

Human beings are very strange animals. For anyone to have such a weak constitution to follow a mad man like Jones, says so much about our species after a millenia on the planet. Who would kill their own children in such a ruthless and forceful way, all because of some command by a demented asshole? I pity such people.

In one of the documentaries, I can't remember which one, there's a wrenching account by a San Francisco official who tried to warn the city government about Jones. No one listened, because the Temple was a reliable source of votes and activists for SF dems. Anyone remember who he was?

The same people who would vote Donald Trump for President, r40.

Jones told his followers that the children were better off dead than captured and corrupted by the US government. I bet some of those Trump voters would do the same if Donald said their kids were going to be turned into gays and Muslims.

I wonder what Jonestown, Guyana looks like today? Bulldozed down? Swallowed up by the jungle?

In the documentary from '08 Jonestown was already gone. The locals said many of the buildings caught fire over the years.

I was in college when it happened and there was a news kiosk in Harvard Square with an electric sign that showed news headlines. Every morning, I would walk by there and every morning, the death toll rose.

It was quite disconcerting.

Hmmm R45, wonder how those buildings caught fire. Arson? Jonestown was rather remote from any other nearby towns or outposts, if I recall correctly.

Febreze, Rose!

Cults brainwash and isolate their followers. But the reason they drank the poisoned Flavoraid was because Jones had men pointing guns at the followers and demanding that they drink or be shot. It was chaos and people were too brainwashed and scared and confused to disobey. Once the mothers killed their kids they of course didn't want to go on living themselves. IIRC only a couple dozen people had the sense to run away into the jungle...some were shot down but others made it to safety.

Jones talks about fucking big men.

Weirdest shit of the 70s

and a movie with Brenda Vacarro!!!!!!!!!!!

yuck!!

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All the toilets and showers at Jonestown were communal. Jones had access to his followers at all times and in another tape he talks about walking into the showers to give orders.

Yikes.

Geez, those poor recovery workers. I can't imagine the smell of rot and decomposition.. and all of that death.

[quote]It appears the infants and toddlers, who had the poisonous potion forced down their throats by their mothers using needle-less five and ten ml. syringes, represented the biggest uncounted group. Their convulsing bodies were placed on the bottom of a rather large but fairly shallow concave area next to the pavilion. Larger children followed the younger ones in death and lay themselves on top of the little ones. Next came preadolescents and adolescents, making up more layers of victims. Then the teens took their last drink on earth and their place among their friends and siblings who died before them.

Shit. That's the worst part to me.

The aforementioned syringes and dixie cups used to administer the poison Flavor-aid.

California congresswoman Jackie Speier was one of the few survivors of the entire massacre. She was a 28 year-old aide to congressman Leo Ryan when the politician and his group were ambushed at an airstrip by Jonestown supporters. She played dead to survive.

The children were all murdered. It was their parent's decision to kill them. One poor woman tried to argue with Jones that the children deserved to live out their lives, but Jones said "don't they deserve peace?" So all of them were killed.

Some adults would not willingly take the poison; it was forced down their throats or they were injected with it. Not all of the dead were suicides.

How incredible is was that people adored and followed Jim Jones, an obviously crazy man. He made it seem that he was a holy man who just wanted improve the lives of the poor and downtrodden (especially African Americans) but all he cared about was money and power and sex. His People's Temple attracted not only gullible poor people but educated, middle class followers as well. They believed in his cause, right to the end. To this day it is still unbelievable.

The wounded (future congresswoman) Jackie Speier.

Milk was obviously very naive about Jones and maybe not the best judge of character.,

"Milk was obviously very naive about Jones and maybe not the best judge of character."

A lot of people were taken in by Jones. He was a good con artist, and he appealed to people's sense of decency, wanting them to believe that he was trying to help the poor and minorities. He fooled a lot of people.

R42 and R43 need to be quiet. Neither of you appear to have any compassion for people who were wishing for better circumstances, and "voting for Trump" does not in itself equate to the horrific brainwashing perpetrated by Jones. I see why some might imagine otherwise, but in a world where corruption is rampant and one side is often no better than the other, I think a broader perspective needs adopting. Stop indulging yourselves with your supposedly oh-so-deep "observations" and distracting from the topic at hand.

[quote] "voting for Trump" does not in itself equate to the horrific brainwashing perpetrated

Yes it does, dear.

No it does not!

Very good thread. I have new material for a future mini-series. I hope mine will be better than the Powers Boothe one.

There was absolutely no connection between Jim Jones, Milk or his killer.

[quote] I don't know if it was the smell of death, per se, [R10], but there was this horrible acrid odor that lingered for months.

After the Towers collapsed the fires continued to burn and smolder for weeks. It acted as an enormous dutch over. Instead of the rot and decomposition in Jonestown the flesh would tend to be dried or cremated

[quote] I bet Dianne Feinstein has ties to them.

And young Attorney Generals who wanted to be governor.

[quote] Wasn't the smell of death what many recall at Ground Zero right after 9/11? That awful, lingering smell

No. The smell at ground zero was of jet fuel and electrical fires, not of dead bodies. I'm sure people involved in excavating the site smelled dead bodies when they encountered one, or pieces of one, but the overall smell was fuel and burnt wires/burnt plastic.

Oh, and keep n mind that most people have never smelled a dead, decomposing body. So lots of people thought the smell of jet fuel mingled with electrical fire was what dead bodies smelled like. They even said so. "I can smell dead bodies." Ummmm...no, you can't. More than 1,000 people were never identified because no trace of them was found. That's because their bodies were either burned or pulverised or both. Then they were buried for months. The Pile was more than six stories high. I never smelled dead bodies and I know what dead bodies smell like.

If you've ever driven past the fuel storage area of a major international airport (like Newark), that's what it mostly smelled like.

Jones loved to fuck men up the ass. One black follower talked about taking the enemas out to clean their asses. I think he was joking because Jones like pumping his male flock in the ass. He also liked being blown by males of his flock as well.

R50 He seems to like clean assholes not smelly ones. He likes flowers...an analogy for clean vaginas and assholes I suppose.

I was part of a group of tourists on one of those "Rapid Response Reality" tours. It was great. We were there on Day Three and it was still practically pristine. Of course the stench was bad, but you expect that. I got lots of pictures and souvenirs. And the jungle there really is beautiful.

One of my prized possessions to this day is a Kool-Aid packet from the scene.

And to think that this OP, who is such a confused mess, actually spelled the plural of "Mary" with an apostrophe.

I hope I get the chance to catch a tour bus to HER location some day.

R75 Nice try dreary but they didn't use Kool-Aid. Just sayin'......

My brother-in-law is retired NYPD. He was assigned to the WTC after 911 and he said that, after a little while, you DID smell the dead bodies if you were working close enough. He said it was mixed in with the other smells - the jet fuel, burnt metal, electrical fires - but that you could still recognize traces of it.

Not that he talks about it very much.

And yet Dede and D'or survived.

Six dozen snow shovels. Uniforms soaked with sweat and bodily fluids. Hacking up a chimpanzee for a practical joke. Jesus. I wonder what kind of biohazard protocols they had back in the seventies to protect workers and whether any of them contracted any diseases. If their uniforms were soaked... Ugh.

R79 In some pictures you can see the military personnel wearing gloves and masks. There is a picture of one guy spraying the bodies with disinfectant. It seems that there were some basic protocols. If something like this happened today recovery team members would be wearing hazmat suits.

Poor cleanup crew.

You couldn't pay me enough.

[quote] I wonder what kind of biohazard protocols they had back in the seventies to protect workers and whether any of them contracted any diseases.

The dead weren't plague victims. I'm not sure about the locals but the American military personnel would have had wide-spectrum inoculations in addition to more basic gear like masks.

You never know what kind of diseases the ;victims may have picked up in their time in the jungle or if they were inoculated before leaving. In the very least, wouldn't the bacteria and organisms present in the cadaver stew cause some sort of sickness if accidentally ingested or if they got on broken skin?

A doctor and nurse were People's Temple members and lived at Jonestown. Jim Jones had the doctor keep medical records of the residents. Again, the victims could have picked up certain illnesses living there that the doctor and nurse may have not known about it.

He worked those poor people to death for 12 or more hours per day in 100+ jungle heat.

Who is to say that more than a few didn't die, at least, of heat-stroke?

A few years back the creamted remains of several Jonestown victims were found in abadoned Dover, Delaware funeral home.

Jane Fonda was also a fan of Jones.

[quote]Who is to say that more than a few didn't die, at least, of heat-stroke?

I have wondered if there were deaths before the mass suicide that were covered up.

R5, I laughed.

[quote] I don't know if it was the smell of death, per se, [R10], but there was this horrible acrid odor that lingered for months.

By an odd coincidence, this was during the time I moved to Manhattan!

I've listened to the death tape before but never knew about the one at R50 till now. Fucking insane.

Before Jones moved the cult to Guyana, he was arrested in LA for propositioning a undercover cop at a porn theater.

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Yikes. Those poor recovery workers.

Agree with r11.

I was too young to remember much but why did Jones go crazy and kill the congressman and then order mass suicide?