Forty-five years later, what happened in Guyana, South America, is still shocking. More than 900 members of the Peoples Temple organization, a former San Francisco-based Disciples of Christ congregation that in exile turned into a militant New Left group, died from ingesting or being injected with potassium cyanide-laced poison. Many corpses were found face down and holding hands in and around the pavilion in the farm commune known as Jonestown, an indication they died willingly.
Ryan recognized that investigating Jones could be dangerous; he considered taking a gun to protect himself from robbers. Yet neither he nor anyone else expected Jones to unleash the violence he did. In the end, Ryan, too, was a victim. At a remote dirt airstrip in Port Kaituma, Guyana, he and four others were assassinated by Jones’ hit squad while escorting 14 Americans to safety.