The following people with connections to Peoples Temple have died since October 2023.
Jim Cobb, a former member of Peoples Temple, one of the Eight Revolutionaries who defected in 1973, and a member of Concerned Relatives who accompanied Rep. Leo Ryan to Jonestown, died in Oakland, California on August 25, 2024. A remembrance by Leslie Wagner-Wilson is here. A remembrance by Vera Washington is here. A remembrance by Fielding M. McGehee III is here.
Neva Sly Hargrave, a member of Peoples Temple who left the church and spent several years counseling abused children and adults, and whose husband and son died in Jonestown, died in Burney, California on April 26, 2024. A remembrance by Rebecca Moore is here. A remembrance by Mickey Touchette is here.
Juanell Smart, a member of Peoples Temple whose mother, uncle, and four children died in Jonestown – and who herself visited Jonestown a few weeks before the tragedy – died in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 22, 2024. A remembrance by Rebecca Moore is here.
Cyril Wecht, a Pittsburgh forensic pathologist who assisted in the identification and processing of the bodies from Jonestown in 1978, died on May 13, 2024.
Cecil Williams, a black minister who served at Glide Methodist Memorial Church in San Francisco and who became a strong political figure during the Temple’s years there, died on April 22, 2024.
Philip G. Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the controversial “Stanford Prison Experiment” that was intended to examine the psychological experiences of imprisonment – and whose pursuit of understanding how external forces shape human behavior led him to also examine the appeal of Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones – died on October 14, 2024. An obituary is here.
Deaths noted from previous years
Leona Collier, who was the Temple’s liaison with San Francisco’s black community during the last 18 months when most of the Temple’s leaders and members were in Guyana, died February 27, 2011. An obituary is here.
Marian K. Towne, who wrote The Onliest One Alive, the first survivor account of Jonestown Hyacinth Thrash as an as-told-to autobiography, died on January 21, 2023 in Indianapolis. An obituary is here.