Hi, everyone, it's Don here.

Jumping in to warn you that this episode contains details of mass murder and suicide that may be distressing to some listeners.

Please proceed at your own discretion.

The Guyanese jungle is dense and tangled. The morning sun cuts through the trees, catching the rising steam from last night's rainfall.

It is humid and sweltering hot.

Soldiers from the Guyanese army move carefully through the vegetation,

packing at the undergrowth.

They've journeyed here from the nearest town, Port Kytuma, over 10 kilometers away.

Now they are on edge, tense, as they approach the site of the Jonestown encampment.

After the shootings at the Kaituma Airfield, on the 18th,

these troops have every reason to expect hostile resistance from the settlers.

But the further in they go, treading ever so quietly,

the more aware they become of the absence of noise.

But for the dew drips from the trees,

the squelch and crack of their boots on the forest floor,

there is only a strange silence.

They've been told nearly a thousand people live here,

and yet nothing, no sound,

not even from the 300 children who should be shouting, playing, crying for food.

There is only an eerie quiet.

And then the smell.

As the soldiers emerge into the open, they cover their noses as a sickly stench of human rot overtakes them.

...