Earlier this year the bodies of thirty-nine men and women were found in this house in San Diego: they were members of the Heaven’s Gate cult. Inside Story: Heaven’s Gate, BBC 2014
They were united in the belief that by following this [Marshall Applewhite] man they could overcome death. Instead they ended their lives in a mass suicide that stunned the world. Heaven’s Gate: The Definitive Story, 2007
It was the largest mass suicide ever on American soil. Detectives soon discovered that the 39 bodies were 18 men and 21 women, most of them well past their twenties. ibid.
The biggest mass suicide ever on American soil. Heaven’s Gate: Cult Suicide, PBS 2015
The cult members committed suicide over a few days in late March 1997. They died in shifts, with some members helping others take a lethal cocktail of phenobarbital and vodka before downing their own doses of the fatal mixture. Police found an eerily placid and orderly scene on March 26th.
Heaven’s Gate members believed that Hale-Bopp, an unusually bright comet, was the sign that they were supposed to shed their earthly bodies (or containers) and join a spacecraft traveling behind the comet that would take them to a higher plane of existence. CNN online article, ‘One Year Later: Heaven’s Gate Suicide Leaves Only Faint Trail’
For God’s sakes let’s get on with it. We lived as no other people have lived. We’ve loved. We’ve had as much of this world as you are going to get. Let’s just be done with it. Let’s be done with the agony of it. Jim Jones
We laid it down. We got tired. We committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world. Jim Jones, cited Stanley Nelson, Jim Jones: The Life and Death of the People’s Temple
Die with a degree of dignity. Lay down your life with dignity. Don’t lay down with tears and agony. There’s nothing to death. Jim Jones
So my opinion is that we be kind to children, and we be kind to seniors, and take the portion like they used to take in ancient Greece, and step over quietly. Because we are not committing suicide; it’s a revolutionary act. We can’t go back. They won’t leave us alone. They’re now going back to tell more lies, which means more Congressmen, and there’s no way, no way we can survive. Jim Jones, Jonestown Guyana, address to followers
Free at last. Keep – keep your emotions down. Keep your emotions down. Children, it will not hurt. If you’d be – if you’ll be quiet. If you’ll be quiet. Jim Jones, Jonestown Guyana
Meanwhile, back at Jonestown, Jim Jones called his followers together. He told them of the congressman being murdered and that to avoid inevitable retribution they must all kill themselves. His lieutenants prepared two fifty-gallon drums of Kool-Aid laced with Valium and Cyanide. Mothers gave the mixture to their infants before the adults lined up to take the poison from paper cups. Finally one Jones and a nurse were left. They used a pistol to kill themselves. In all 913 died. Great Crimes & Trials s1e8: The Jonestown Massacre, BBC 1993
On November 18th 1978 members of the sect drank a cyanide-laced fruit punch from their spiritual father Reverend Jim Jones. They then lay down to die. Or so it seemed. Jonestown Cult
In November 1978 Congressman Leo Ryan had taken a news team and a group of concerned relatives to Guyana. The previous year Jim Jones and his Californian People’s Temple had relocated there following allegations and increasing media scrutiny. ibid.
What began as a Congressional investigation ended in massacre: five people lay murdered on the air strip, but twenty others had managed to escape into the bush. ibid.
Jim Jones was just twenty-five years old when he founded the People’s Temple in Indianapolis in 1956. He’d been fascinated by religion since an early age. ibid.
In 1965 Jones moved his controversial congregation to rural Redwood Valley in northern California. He’d read in a magazine article that it was a safe haven from nuclear war. ibid.
There were stories of systematic abuse. ibid.
As Temple defectors revealed one horror story after another to reporter Marshall Kilduff [San Francisco Chronicle] the contrast with Jones’s humanitarian image couldn’t have been greater. ibid.
Suicide drills and beatings were as much a part of the Temple internal life as social service was to its public face. ibid.
On November 18th 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana, 909 members of People’s Temple died in what has been called the largest mass suicide in modern history. Storyville: Jonestown: The World’s Biggest Mass Suicide, BBC 2012
‘Tim, how’s it going … I’ll fuck you in the arse if you want.’ ibid.
Guyana 17 November 1978: Yesterday afternoon five Americans were shot down by other Americans … They’d gone to investigate a cult called the People’s Temple. Storyville: Terror in the Jungle I II, television news, BBC 2019
You have never met a man like Jim Jones before. ibid. witness
I am the creator of the People’s Temple mission and I will have my way. ibid. Jones
San Francisco 1972 six years before the massacre: ‘We shall have our freedom here and now.’ ibid.
The only God you need is within you. ibid.
I witnessed many many many healings. ibid. witness
At age 25, Jim Jones forms his first church in Indianapolis. ibid. caption
In 1965 Jim Jones and 140 church members move to Redwood Valley, California. ibid.
The rampant drug use increased his paranoia. ibid. dude
More than 900 People’s Temple members are living in Jonestown, Guyana. ibid. caption
Leslie’s group plans to hike through the jungle to a small village called Matthew’s Ridge. ibid.
You could see he [Jones] was not right. ibid. survivor
We’re up over twenty people. ibid. survivor’s group
A supernatural force swept in and took over the place. ibid.
March 23 1997: 74 dead after Solar Temple mass suicide in Quebec, Canada. Chris Everard, Lady Die
Chmurny’s decision to swallow the pill Wednesday unnerved Howard Circuit Court officials and stunned his lawyer, Dino Flores.
Flores said he had no inkling that the 57-year-old scientist, a man he described as ‘very intelligent’ was contemplating suicide.
‘I had no idea anything like this was possible,’ a shaken Flores said yesterday. ‘Certainly, sitting right next to him as he does this, it’s very surreal to me.’
Chmurny faced a maximum penalty of more than 30 years in prison for the crimes. Sentencing had been scheduled for November 15.
Chmurny’s actions at the defense table in Howard Circuit Court’s ceremonial courtroom were not unprecedented. At least once before in Maryland, a defendant committed suicide by taking cyanide in open court. (Murder & Suicide & Court) Baltimore Sun online article Lisa Goldberg 14th September 2001, ‘Chmurny succumbs to suicide’
My God, I want to die so bad. Dylan Klebold, letter, Columbine School Massacre
I have no happiness, no ambitions, no friends and no Love! ibid.
Four years later Shipman hanged himself in his prison cell. Harold Shipman: Dr Death
I think I was trying to get myself killed. Brenda Spencer
Catch the Midnight Express; it’s not a train. Midnight Express 1978 starring Brad Davis & Irene Miracle & Bo Hopkins & Paolo Bonacelli & Paul L Smith & Randy Quaid & John Hurt & Norbert Weisser et al, director Alan Parker, Hurt
Suddenly I vided what to do. And what I had wanted to do. And that was to do myself in. To snuff it. To blast off for ever out of this wicked cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps. And then sleep for ever and ever and ever. A Clockwork Orange 1971 starring Malcolm McDowell & Patrick Magee & Michael Bates & Warren Clarke & John Clive & Adrienne Corri & Carl Duering & Paul Farrell & Clive Francis & Michael Gover et al, director Stanley Kubrick, Alex throws himself from window
I jumped, oh my brothers. And I fell hard. But I did not snuff it. ibid. Alex in hospital