{"id":128363,"date":"2024-10-10T15:10:46","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T22:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=128363"},"modified":"2026-03-03T15:49:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T23:49:54","slug":"obituaries-2024","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=128363","title":{"rendered":"Obituaries 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The following people with connections to Peoples Temple have died since October 2023.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Jim Cobb<\/strong>, a former member of Peoples Temple, one of the <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=14075\">Eight Revolutionaries<\/a> 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=128496\">here<\/a>. A remembrance by Vera Washington is <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=128541\">here<\/a>. A remembrance by Fielding M. McGehee III is <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=128146\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Neva Sly Hargrave<\/strong>, 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=127210\">here<\/a>. A remembrance by Mickey Touchette is <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=127109\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Juanell Smart<\/strong>, a member of Peoples Temple whose mother, uncle, and four children died in Jonestown \u2013 and who herself visited Jonestown a few weeks before the tragedy \u2013 died in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 22, 2024. A remembrance by Rebecca Moore is <a href=\"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=127087\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Cyril Wecht<\/strong>, a Pittsburgh forensic pathologist who assisted in the identification and processing of the bodies from Jonestown in 1978, died on May 13, 2024.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Cecil Williams<\/strong>, a black minister who served at Glide Methodist Memorial Church in San Francisco and who became a strong political figure during the Temple\u2019s years there, <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20260210005505\/https:\/\/www.sfchronicle.com\/sf\/article\/cecil-williams-obituary-17820200.php\">died<\/a> on April 22, 2024.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Philip G. Zimbardo<\/strong>, the psychologist behind the controversial \u201cStanford Prison Experiment\u201d that was intended to examine the psychological experiences of imprisonment \u2013 and whose pursuit of understanding how external forces shape human behavior led him to also examine the appeal of Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones \u2013 died on October 14, 2024. An obituary is <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20260224191514\/https:\/\/news.stanford.edu\/stories\/2024\/10\/philip-zimbardo-the-psychologist-behind-stanford-prison-experiment-dies-at-age-91\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Deaths noted from previous years<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Marian K. Towne<\/strong>, who wrote <em>The Onliest One Alive<\/em>, the first survivor account of Jonestown Hyacinth Thrash as an as-told-to autobiography, died on January 21, 2023 in Indianapolis. An obituary is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20251013113451\/https:\/\/www.dignitymemorial.com\/obituaries\/indianapolis-in\/marian-towne-11118114\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":128499,"menu_order":39,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-128363","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128363","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=128363"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135365,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128363\/revisions\/135365"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/128499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}