Jonestown: Vacation Destination? If Thirsty, "Don't Drink the Kool-Aid"

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

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Summary

909 people, including 267 children, died by suicide or were murdered by cyanide injection on November 18, 1978, at "The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project", better known by the unofficial name "Jonestown" after the leader of the group, Jim Jones. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the group, how they ended up in the jungle of Guyana, and how most of the men, women, and children, died. Professor Morgan explains how Dr. William Eckert described the "smell of death" a mile away and 2000 feet in the air in a helicopter as he was arriving at the facility, what took place in identifying the dead, the condition of the bodies that were exposed to the elements, and what it would have been like for the victims who "drank the kool-aid". Oddly enough, the phrase "drink the kool-aid", referring to people blindly following leadership regardless of the truth, isn't correct. The people of Jonestown did not drink "Kool-Aid". They drank a cheap, knock-off version of Kool-Aid called Flavor Aid.

Transcribe Highlights
00:01.72 Introduction - environment

01:42.95 Jonestown "Don't Drink the Kool-Aid"

05:16.89 Remembering the reporting of Jonestown Suicide

09:41.90 Describing bloated bodies

10:34.71 What is left of Jonestown

12:18.99 Jim Jones cultivated political relationships

16:25.53 Jonestown was very isolated

20:06.23 Flies would be all over the scene

25:28.77 Have to determine how people were killed

29:54.63 Rep Leo Ryan killed at airstrip 6 miles from Jonestown

34:47.87 Jim Jones was not a "man of the cloth"

39:20.62 Value of Dark Tourism

40:25.99 Conclusion

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:05.6	Body Backs with Joseph Scott Moore.
0:09.8	As you know, I'm proud to say that I'm from Louisiana.
0:15.2	I don't live there now.
0:16.6	I miss home.
0:17.5	I miss my family down there many days.
0:20.6	But I have fond memories of my childhood and early adulthood down there.
0:24.6	I learned a lot.
0:25.6	The state taught me a lot.
0:26.6	The environment taught me a lot down there, particularly when it came to being a death investigator.
0:33.6	Nature's funny that way.
0:36.6	It can teach you things about life, even in the midst of horrible
0:43.2	circumstances when you're observing all that remains relative to death. It's a harsh environment,
0:52.2	just like, say, a jungle, a lot of humidity.
0:57.8	Everything seems like it's wet because it is most of the time.
1:03.0	And it seems that it consumes everything around it, whether it's vines or trees or low-growth scrub or just the animals that live there.
1:18.0	Everything over a period of time bends its knee to nature in those wet environments.
1:25.8	Much like the jungle of Guyana, where several decades back, we had a horrible
1:35.5	event that occurred, an event that still impacts even our language today.
1:43.6	Don't drink the Kool-Aid.
1:46.6	But with that in mind, there is now a company out there that wishes to take people on a tour.
1:58.1	A tour of a location where one of the most disgusting and horrible events in human history took place.
	...

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