Q897 Summary

Summary prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.

To read the Tape Transcript, click here. To listen to MP3, click here.
To return to the Tape Index, click here.

FBI Catalogue: Jones Speaking

Date cues on tape: None

People named: None

Bible verses cited: None

Summary:

(Note: This tape was transcribed by Michael Bellefountaine. The editors gratefully acknowledge his invaluable assistance.)

(Note: This tape was one of the 53 tapes initially withheld from public disclosure.)

In this short, undated tape – the only reference to a date was a divorce from 1971 – Jim Jones performs a healing of a woman who had cancer. The healing is followed by a testimonial by another woman whom Jones healed as well.

The tape begins with the preliminaries to the healing already underway. Jones is revealing “little things” about an elderly woman’s life, because they are important to build her faith. He reminds her how much she spent in an uncontested divorce and what the name of the law firm was that represented her. He also asks her to tell the congregation whether she had given him this information before, and she says she hasn’t. He invites her into his “aura,” then asks her to vomit up the cancer. As the music swells in the congregation, the woman reaches into her throat to dislodge the cancer. The blood and apparently vile-smelling growth spills on the floor, and Jones asks the “thousands of people” gathered as witnesses to “praise the name of Jesus Christ.”

In the last few minutes of the tape, another woman speaks of how Jones revealed personal items that no one else knew about her. She already had faith in him, but it was renewed through the revelations. She was also surprised to learn that she was sick, but didn’t doubt that he knew of her illness. She concludes her testimony by saying, “I don’t have to tell you whether I saw him as a man or a prophet. He healed me of a terrible cancer in my throat, so you know I saw him as God, my Savior.”

FBI Summary:    

Date of transcription: 6/27/79

In connection with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the assassination of U.S. Congressman LEO J. RYAN at Port Kaituma, Guyana, South America, on November 18, 1978, a tape recording was obtained. This tape recording was located in Jonestown, Guyana, South America, and was turned over to U.S. Officials in Guyana and subsequently transported to the United States.

On June 11, 1979, Special Agent (name deleted) reviewed the tape numbered 1B102-C31. This tape was found to contain the following: A recording of JIM JONES healing people.

Differences with FBI Summary: 

The summary is accurate and meets the FBI’s purposes.

Tape originally posted April 2004