“I believe that the balance of the evidence
about using cyanide indicates it is best not used.”
Derek Humphry, Final Exit
Cyanide is a chemical asphyxiant. It interferes with the bloodstream’s ability
to carry oxygen from the lungs. It acts
very quickly, with the symptoms of a lethal cyanide poisoning occurring within
several minutes if ingested and death taking place minutes to maybe a couple of
hours after that. Inhaling cyanide gas
yields quicker results.
One debated question is whether the poisoned
individual suffers. One source has it
that there really isn’t any suffering, that buildup of carbon dioxide in the
blood brings on rapid unconsciousness and the end comes peacefully.
That’s one perspective. Anecdotal accounts say differently. Several states used hydrogen cyanide gas to
carry out executions before the advent of lethal injection. Nevada was the first to adopt lethal gas in
the 1920s. It was touted as more humane
than hanging. The condemned would simply
drift off to a permanent sleep.
The reality was another matter. Nevada’s first gas chamber execution involved
a Chinese immigrant named Gee Jon, who was convicted of killing a member of a rival
tong. Gee Jon did not take it well,
understandably. While the witnesses did
not report any undue suffering on the prisoner’s part, there were a few hiccups
in the execution protocol.
About four pounds of liquid cyanide were pumped
in, but it was a chilly day and much of the poison pooled on the chamber
floor. A few witnesses said at one point
they smelled bitter almonds, a telltale sign of a leak, which caused the
viewing room to be evacuated until it could be ascertained there was in fact no
leak. The coroner refused to autopsy Gee
Jong for fear he would be poisoned upon opening up the corpse. Nevertheless, the Gee Jong execution was
deemed a success and other states soon followed the Silver State’s lead.
The lore of the gas chamber contains a number
of hair-raising stories. The condemned
would go into convulsions. Blood would
trickle from the nostrils. The mouth
would foam. Very unpleasant to watch.
Executions in California’s death chamber were their
own source of legend. Barbara Graham,
convicted with two accomplices of murdering an elderly woman, was advised by the
corrections officer strapping her into the chair to wait until the cyanide eggs
dropped into the hydrochloric acid, then take a deep breath. Unconsciousness would come quickly, she was
assured. Graham’s response: “How the
hell would you know?”
Caryl Chessman, condemned for kidnapping under
California’s Little Lindbergh law, had fought his death sentence in the courts
for over a decade, becoming an international cause célèbre in the process.
Chessman could only delay the inevitable, however, and he was determined
to extend his life by an additional minute if that’s what it came down to. Once the gas was released, he held his breath
as long as possible before succumbing to the need to exhale and inhale. Chessman’s end was predictably agonizing.
Ingesting cyanide is a somewhat slower death,
but it is 100% effective. At the end of
the Second World War, a number of top Nazis committed suicide this way. Hermann Goering cheated the hangman at Nuremburg
just hours before his scheduled execution, using a cyanide capsule he had smuggled
into his prison cell.
Cyanide would be the chosen means of death by
Jim Jones and camp physician Larry Schacht for the residents of Jonestown. Although Schacht had not researched lethal
poisons until sometime in early 1978, Jones had long used the specter of
suicide by poison as a loyalty test of his inner circle. The so-called “White Nights” in Jonestown were
rehearsals for the inevitable. The means
simply had to be worked out.
The murder of Congressman Leo Ryan and several
members of his party spelled the end of Peoples Temple and its leader. When Jonestown’s residents gathered at the pavilion
one last time, they learned of the congressman’s fate and their own as
well. The “medicine” was ready for them.
The lethal cocktail was potassium cyanide,
diphenhydramine hydrochloride, and, according to a few sources, Thorazine. The drugs were mixed in with vats of grape
Flavor-Aid. As a layman researching the
story, I find the choice of ingredients puzzling. Cyanide works fast, so why the need of the
other two medications? I’ve never taken
Thorazine, but it stands to reason that it would take an hour or two to reach
full effect. I have taken
diphenhydramine lots of times—it’s the active ingredient of over-the-counter medications
such as Benadryl and Unisom. As a sleep
aid, it takes a couple of hours to work.
But Dr. Schacht had his reasons, I suppose.
Why did the people of Jonestown acquiesce? There were guards around the pavilion, to be
sure, armed with rifles and crossbows.
Still, if a number of people made a break for it most would have had a chance. Groupthink is one explanation. But there were arguments voiced against
suicide. Christine Miller, who had joined
Peoples Temple in Los Angeles and had a reputation for outspokenness, openly challenged
Jim Jones’ decision in front of everyone.
Christine Miller was both typical and an
outlier among Temple adherents. The daughter
of Texas sharecroppers, she made her way to Southern California and worked as a
civil servant. When she joined Peoples
Temple, Christine had made a comfortable life for herself. She wanted to do more and the Temple afforded
ample opportunities to help others. Like
many Temple members, she had donated most of her assets to the church. Although she went along with most of Jones’
dictates Christine Miller was one of the relatively few individuals allowed to
dispute Jim Jones, albeit within reason.
Christine emigrated to Guyana on her own,
unlike most of Jonestown’s settlers. She
soon regretted this decision, believing Jonestown was a failing experiment and telling
Jones she would be more useful back home.
Despite it all, she remained.
At the pavilion, Jones asked if there were any
dissenting opinions to the “revolutionary suicide” he proposed. Christine Miller stepped up to the mike. The ensuing exchange, caught on the so-called “death
tape,” is remarkable. Christine
questioned the morality of killing children.
She pointed out that where there is life, there is hope (a theme from
Jones’ sermons.) She asked whether immigrating
to Russia was still an option.
Jones replied it was too late for Russia and that
suicide was the only means of allaying the pain of life. The exchange was fairly civil at first, with
Jones saying he respected Christine and her opinions. Background voices seem to show that a few people
in the crowd were sympathetic to her at first.
But as the dialogue went on, others loudly objected to Christine’s words
with some comparing her to the defectors who had just left with Leo Ryan.
Finally, Jim McElvane intervened. McElvane was a recent arrival at Jonestown also
from the Los Angeles congregation, but he was a member of the Temple’s security
team and a trusted confidante to Jones. McElvane
peremptorily cut Christine Miller off, telling her she owed her life to Jim
Jones and to stop her needless arguing.
The matter was settled. People queued behind the poison vats,
drinking their death from paper cups. Small
children had the brew injected with oral syringes. Those who resisted were quickly subdued and given
the poison by hypodermic. The process
was supervised by Marceline Jones and the camp nurses, Annie Moore among
them.
Not everyone was subjected to the poison. Lawyers Charles Garry and Mark Felt were told
to leave and retreated into the tree line until it was safe to venture
out. Financial secretary Maria Katsaris
gave suitcases of cash to brothers Tim and Mike Carter and Mike Prokes for
delivery to the Soviet embassy in Georgetown, along with letters transferring
rights to the Temple’s offshore bank accounts.
Katsaris also furnished them with revolvers. She instructed them that they were not to be
taken alive. The suitcases were very
heavy and the men did not get far. They
abandoned the suitcases, took part of the cash from them, and walked along the
railroad tracks to Port Kaituma where they were taken into custody by the
police.
A few got away by subterfuge. Stanley Clayton, a young survivor of Oakland’s
streets, bluffed his way past security on the pretext of an official
errand. Clayton had witnessed the death
throes of the first people who drank the poison and wanted no part of it. He, too, hid at the edge of the surrounding
jungle. Odell Rhodes got away in a
similar fashion. Grover Davis missed the
call to the pavilion and hid in a ditch once the suicides began. Several others, nine adults and children, had
left earlier in the day, before Ryan’s assassination, to go on a “picnic” as
part of a prearranged escape plan.
Hyacinth Thrash survived by default. Depending on the source, she either slept
through the suicides and awoke the next morning to find a field of dead bodies
lying face down around the pavilion or she heard the commotion and hid until it
was over. Either way, she survived. Mrs. Thrash would live on for nearly twenty
more years.
Jonestown was not the only venue for Temple
suicides. Sharon Amos headed the Peoples
Temple contingent in Georgetown.
Informed of Leo Ryan’s death and Rev. Jim’s decision by radio, she was
instructed to kill the Temple’s “enemies” in the capital and to then take their
own lives. She settled for cutting the
throats of her two youngest children.
Afterward, Sharon and her eldest daughter Liane Harris simultaneously slashed
each other’s throats.
Staying at the Georgetown house were Stephan
Jones and the Jonestown basketball team, who were in town to play an exhibition
game. Marceline Jones urged her son to
return to Jonestown as Leo Ryan’s visit approached but Stephan refused. Stephan recognized that his father was
becoming increasingly unhinged and had resolved to stay away. Frustrated, he left with his teammates in
their van the afternoon of Ryan’s assassination and missed the carnage.
Back at the Jonestown pavilion, it became quiet
as darkness approached. Jim Jones’ taped
death rant ended. He would be either the
last or second to last to die. He did
not drink the cyanide but died from a gunshot to the head. Lying nearby was nurse Annie Moore. According to the autopsy of her badly
decomposed body, there was a lethal amount of cyanide in her tissues but she
had also suffered a gunshot to the head.
One explanation is that Jones shot himself; another is that Moore shot
him then herself.
But why the poison and the gun? Either would have been sufficient on its own. One explanation is that she wanted to be
certain of dying. After all, should she
fail there would be a lot of explaining to do having fatally poisoned nearly a
thousand people. Maybe she trusted the
cyanide to do the job but chose to hasten things as the symptoms set in. It’s academic in any case.
As morning fell upon Jonestown on November 19,
1978, police and Guyana Defence Force soldiers entered the settlement. It was all over. The world outside was left to wonder and
speculate.
© 2018 The Unassuming Scholar
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