Escape Attempt From Jonestown (November 1977) Jim Jones ANGRY!

The tape consists of a portion of a meeting in Jonestown during which two young men – Tommy Bogue and Brian Davis – who made an unsuccessful escape attempt appear before the community to explain their actions and to learn what discipline they will face as a result. Neither the beginning nor the end of the meeting appear here, so there is no firm indication of what the community’s decision will bewhen the tape ends. (The boys’ voices are difficult to differentiate, and both are indicated on the accompanying transcript as “young man in trouble.”)

Tommy and Brian had apparently left the Jonestown community under cover of darkness after having stolen several items such as flashlights and matches. They had made few plans beyond the escape itself, and weren’t even going to stay together: one had planned to go to Venezuela, and the other planned to live along a local river, catching fish to survive. Jim Jones is upset, in part, because he says he has had to involve the Guyana government in locating the young men, costing him good will and political capital; the community is upset, in part, because it lost a day of work searching for them.

At the beginning of the tape, Jones is reminding the young men of the dangers they faced while they were gone. There are wild animals in the jungle, he says, ranging from tigers and ocelots, to several kinds of snakes that can kill a human being. The animals don’t bother the people of Jonestown, he reassures them later in the tape, “because we have a protective aura. Nothing comes in here.” But that protection doesn’t extend beyond the perimeter of the community.

Jones also tells Tommy and Brian that everyone in the country was on the lookout for them. He had alerted every person in the government, from the prime minister on down to the local police. There is a law, he says later, making everyone in the country responsible for returning Temple members to Jonestown. And that’s how they were caught. “How do you suppose we knew where you were? You passed two government people. They informed us. All the natives informed us.”

What’s more, he adds, had they made it to the Venezuelan border, “[t]he Border Patrol said, if you try to cross, you’d be shot.” If they had been captured by the local police, they could have been thrown in jail and “whipped 39 times with a cat o’nine tails.” And if they hadn’t been caught soon, someone would have found them in the jungle after five or six days, and they would have been barely alive.

At some points in the tape, Jones asks the young men what they would have done to survive, although — apparently in an effort to prevent them from lying — he reminds them that the Jonestown leadership knows a lot already. When the escapees say they would have found jobs, Jones sounds perplexed. There are jobs available at Jonestown, he says. Beyond that, they have free medical care, as well as the love of the community.

Later in the meeting, though, Jones offers another reason the young men shouldn’t have left, and the tone of his voice suggests this one is closer to his true belief: “There’s no possible way we can tolerate anarchy,” he says, “no possible way that we can tolerate people going out and living on their own.”

Tommy and Brian apparently have declared they wanted to return to the U.S., but Jones says they won’t return to what he calls “that fascist Babylon” until everybody in San Francisco has joined them. At that point, he says to cheers and applause, “then we’ll be glad to be rid of the likes of both of you.”

Jones’ anger seems genuine. He speaks through gritted teeth on several occasions. He sets the tone of the abuse leveled at the boys by calling them “vermin,” “parasitical,” “contemptible.” At one point, he snaps, “You’re vile. You’re evil. You’re insidious. You’re low.” At another, he literally spits numerous times in disgust.

While Jones’ criticism of the boys is the most prolonged, he is by no means alone, and other community members follow his lead. While tentative at first, eventually a number of voices speak against them. The anger of the community is as deep as Jones’. “We didn’t want to look for you at all,” one woman shouts. “We woulda left you [in the jungle].”

A woman who had counseled one of them, promising him confidentiality, says she thinks their actions have relieved her of that obligation. Jones agrees — “It’s all obliterated… Your privileged relationship with your counselor no longer exists in this room. She’s ordered by the good of the collective to tell everything you’ve said” — and the woman speaks of the young man’s lack of interest in the community, in the cause, and in socialism itself. At other points in the tape, other women — or perhaps the same one — says the young man described himself as being more of a capitalist than a socialist, although he is apparently willing to accept the benefits of a socialist life.