The first of a new series, Jonestown Revisited, Newsweek looks at the fateful events that led to the worst murder-suicide in American history.
In this series, Newsweek reconstructs the events leading to the Jonestown Massacre as it happened in 1978, day by day.Congressman Leo Ryan, a 53-year-old Democrat from San Mateo, California, was known for political theater. During his two decades as a politician, he had posed as an inmate to investigate prison conditions, went undercover as a substitute teacher to document poverty in Watts, and laid beside baby seals in Newfoundland to keep them from being slaughtered by fur hunters.
The silver-haired politician stepped into a fray after a group of his constituents asked him to investigate the welfare of their loved ones in the community. The"Concerned Relatives" as the group came to call itself, had compared notes and realized something strange, perhaps even sinister, was happening in the South American settlement. Some relatives hadn't received a single letter from their family in Jonestown for more than a year.
But therein lay the rub: The State Department was too fearful of violating resident's First Amendment rights—which prohibited government interference in the religious practices of American citizens—to investigate Jonestown.
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