{"id":128058,"date":"2024-08-25T16:29:24","date_gmt":"2024-08-25T23:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=128058"},"modified":"2025-02-19T11:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T19:56:09","slug":"letter-from-the-editor-reporters-obsession-with-jonestown-leads-to-in-depth-michigan-ties-to-infamous-cult","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=128058","title":{"rendered":"Letter from the Editor: Reporter\u2019s obsession with Jonestown leads to in-depth Michigan ties to infamous cult"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Editor\u2019s note<\/strong>: This article is republished courtesy of MLive.com. The original article appears <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
In this photo from 1974, the Rev. Jim Jones (in red shirt) leads Peoples Temple members through cleared grounds of the future Jonestown site in Guyana. Jones leads chimpanzee Mr. Muggs, a community mascot, on a leash. Standing to Jones’ right is his son, Stephan G. Jones. Photo provided by The Jonestown Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cole Waterman\u2019s reporting beat typically focuses on crime and public safety in and around Bay City.<\/p>\n

This week, however, he has traveled back 45 years to one of the most notorious crime scenes in history, nearly 3,000 miles away from Michigan \u2013 and made it a compelling local story.<\/p>\n

Shirlee Fields and her family were among the 900-plus people who died in a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. She also was a Bay City native, and Waterman\u2019s meticulous research and reporting have produced\u00a0a five-part series<\/a>\u00a0that provide fresh insights into the madness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always had an interest in Jonestown \u2013 I\u2019ve read biographies and watched documentaries,\u201d Waterman said. \u201cAround 2019 I was reading the list of all 918 (victims) \u2026 I did a search of Michigan just out of curiosity. There were eight, and the eighth one was from Bay City.\u201d<\/p>\n

That tidbit stayed with him until September, when he realized that the 45th anniversary of the event \u2013 the suicides occurred on Nov. 18 \u2013 was coming up. He started digging in, thinking maybe he\u2019d get one article out of what looked like a bit of historical trivia.<\/p>\n

But the more he dug into archives, the more he tracked down sources and the more he learned about the life and mindset of Fields, the more he was drawn in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt got a little obsessive on my end,\u201d he said. \u201cAlmost every day I would come home and tell my girlfriend, \u2018Look what I found.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He found Bay City Times news tidbits about her mundane activities as a child, and also located high school classmates of Fields\u2019 from the 1950s. They remembered her but none knew she had died, let alone been at Jonestown. \u201cIt was a little weird giving them the news that their friend died \u2026 before I was born.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Waterman scored an interview with Jim Jones\u2019 son, Stephan Jones, who knew Fields and her family and related anecdotes about them from their time in Jonestown. Waterman\u00a0found letters written by Fields,<\/a>\u00a0and even has an audio recording of cult leader Jones and Fields in a group discussion.<\/p>\n

Waterman used what he gathered to masterfully build a narrative that shows how Fields could start as a bright, progressive young woman in Bay City and end up dead by her own hand in South America. The series also tracks Jim Jones\u2019 start as an activist for civil rights and social change in America through his evolution into a paranoid and dystopian autocrat in the Guyana jungle.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one who joined it was forced or kidnapped into it; they all gravitated toward it because they already had their ideals or philosophy or theology and (Jones) aligned with it,\u201d Waterman said. \u201cThe part I found so fascinating is that he started with this charitable, selfless, social mission, railing against all the right things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though Jonestown remains one of the most infamous events in world history and has been the subject of many books and documentaries, Waterman was able to bring fresh perspective by focusing on the mindset and motivations of one committed adherent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an amazing piece of journalism \u2013 well-researched, well-documented, but also always focusing on the human side of the story,\u201d wrote Rebecca Moore, who lost two sisters at Jonestown and runs The Jonestown Institute website, in an email to Waterman.<\/p>\n

That human side of the story was Shirlee\u2019s story. Bay City was the common thread she shared with Waterman. The story can help us understand universal themes that resonate today.<\/p>\n

\u201cStephan Jones told me why the whole matter is still relevant and what we can learn from it,\u201d Waterman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you find yourself part of some movement or organization that doesn\u2019t allow dissent or questioning or the leader puts him or herself above everybody else \u2013 and, obviously, that\u2019s still happening today \u2013 that\u2019s a warning sign to maybe get out of that group.\u201d<\/p>\n

# # #<\/p>\n

John Hiner is the vice president of content for MLive Media Group. If you have questions you\u2019d like him to answer, or topics to explore, share your thoughts at\u00a0<\/em>editor@mlive.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Editor\u2019s note: This article is republished courtesy of MLive.com. The original article appears here.) Cole Waterman\u2019s reporting beat typically focuses on crime and public safety in and around Bay City. This week, however, he has traveled back 45 years to one of the most notorious crime scenes in history, nearly 3,000 miles away from Michigan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":128015,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-128058","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128059,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128058\/revisions\/128059"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}