{"id":29479,"date":"2013-07-25T17:08:55","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T17:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=29479"},"modified":"2026-02-13T16:11:43","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T00:11:43","slug":"wunrow2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=29479","title":{"rendered":"The birth of an investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Rose Wunrow\u2019s paper is <\/em>The psychological massacre: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

As the final project of my junior year English class in high school, each of us was to research a topic of our choosing, develop a thesis out of our research, and write an in-depth paper presenting our evidence. My dad had recently watched a PBS documentary about Peoples Temple, and his description of its story intrigued me so much, that\u2019s what I decided to research. My interest in the topic increased as I began my work. The story was so complicated and multi-dimensional that it more than merited the several months of research assigned to our projects.<\/p>\n

Initially, I thought that I would focus on Jim Jones\u2019 psychology and the ways in which he changed during his leadership. However, there was one requirement for the paper which I wasn\u2019t sure I could fulfill: the interview element. I had no idea if I could find people connected to the Temple who would agree to talk to me. I also worried that the questions I wanted to ask would come off as insensitive and ignorant, and that I would unintentionally offend the people to whom I wrote.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, the interview part was the most surprising and gratifying part of the research process for me. After hunting around the internet and running into several dead ends, I came across this site and its list<\/a> of email addresses of Jonestown survivors who might be willing to talk to me. Of the five people I emailed, three wrote back and agreed to interviews. Their extensive answers to my questions made writing about this topic an immensely real and illuminating experience for me. I could not have explored this subject in such depth without the kind cooperation of Laura Johnston Kohl, Teri Buford O\u2019Shea, Leslie Wagner-Wilson, and Dr. Rebecca Moore, and I send out my heartfelt thanks to them!<\/p>\n

As the assignment required, my research paper<\/a> presents an argument formulated out of my research and the interviews, as it considers the question of whether the suicides at Jonestown could be considered a massacre. More specifically, it focuses on the different methods Jones used to maintain his control over his followers in the Temple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Rose Wunrow\u2019s paper is The psychological massacre: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple.) As the final project of my junior year English class in high school, each of us was to research a topic of our choosing, develop a thesis out of our research, and write an in-depth paper presenting our evidence. My dad had recently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":29485,"menu_order":16,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-29479","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29479","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29479"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133731,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29479\/revisions\/133731"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}