A father who had known Rev. Jim Jones since the early days of Peoples Temple in Indiana said that as soon as he approached the Jonestown settlement in Guyana, he wanted to escape.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to that front gate, I seen those armed guards,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s when my heart fell. I knew then, I didn\u2019t have to wait until I got into Jonestown, I knew then I had made the biggest mistake of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
His daughter, not yet in her teens, said, \u201cThey were just standing around with guns. And that\u2019s when I knew, \u2018Oh my God, we\u2019re in trouble.\u2019\u201d She went on, \u201cI knew in the first month there, I\u2019m stuck here and I\u2019m most likely going to die here.\u201d<\/p>\n
On that Saturday morning, Nov. 18th, there were roughly 940 members of Peoples Temple in Guyana. When that night had ended, some 32 were still alive.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a senior documentary producer at CNN, but 30 years ago, I was an NBC correspondent who had worked alongside the late Don Harris, and I helped cover a portion of the story after he, Congressman Leo Ryan, and three others were gunned down in the airport ambush that became the prelude to all the other deaths at Jim Jones\u2019 instigation.<\/p>\n
This spring, I had just finished a two-hour documentary at CNN looking back on the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when my boss walked up to me to say he wanted me to do something similar about Jonestown for this fall. I tried to refuse. To me, it was an ugly story with very little new to be said, and an artificial anniversary date was hardly an excuse to resurrect what took place that day.<\/p>\n
I watched Stanley Nelson\u2019s PBS documentary and thought nothing could be done better than that\u2014this story already has been re-told, very well indeed. Then a question crossed my mind: what about the survivors, those who actually got out of Jonestown that very day? For most of them, it must have taken unfathomable courage born of sheer desperation.<\/p>\n
I began to look for those who made it out, to try to tell their story, both then and also now, what life has brought them in their three extra decades. Understandably, a number I approached were reluctant to revisit the day\u2019s horror. I think I would have felt the same way. But we did talk on-camera with five, and the stories we heard are remarkable.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst off, I thought, \u2018Okay, this is the day that I\u2019m gonna die,\u2019\u201d said that young girl. \u201cI remember going to the kitchen and grabbing a butcher knife and sticking it down in the front of my pants,\u201d said one of three women who began walking that morning to a railroad town almost 40 miles away.<\/p>\n
When one of the departing family members was killed in the fusillade at the airstrip, the father told the children to run and hide in the jungle. They went too far. As night approached, adults searched and failed. \u201cAnd I thought, \u2018Oh my God, don\u2019t tell me they\u2019re lost,\u2019\u201d the father said.<\/p>\n
They were, for two nights and three days. When they emerged\u2014two wounded in the airport gunfire, the youngest feverish, another girl almost in shock\u2014they found themselves back at the edge of the airstrip. Somebody sent for the girl\u2019s brother. \u201cHe come running up, and I\u2019ll never forget the look on his face,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was like he had seen a ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n
It took years for the nightmare to subside. Everyone we met today is doing well, but only after time. One is a policeman\u2014after a decade-long struggle with drugs and alcohol. Another, a grandmother, works in health care and is a licensed real estate agent\u2014but along the way, went to jail briefly while on crack cocaine. One man told me he did not kick his heroin habit until a counselor finally pointed out he relapsed at the same time each year. Each one, though, has become a personal success story, against considerable odds.<\/p>\n
Put them all together in a village today in small-town America, and to the outsider\u2019s eye, there would be little different about these people who, on the most desperate day of all, dared to live.<\/p>\n
Yet the oldest we met, and probably the wisest, put it this way: \u201cWhoever said time heals all wounds didn\u2019t know what the hell he was talking about. It doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
CNN\u2019s documentary, Escape from Jonestown<\/em>, is scheduled to air at 9 p.m. both Eastern and Pacific time on Thursday evening, November 13th.\u00a0 It will re-run in prime time again on Saturday and Sunday nights, Nov. 15 and 16.<\/p>\n