Death in the Jungle

Chapter One

One Weird Kid

The first time Jim Jones asked followers to play dead was on an autumn night in 1941.

The ten-­year-­old urged the other boys to come on.

They hesitated. Jimmy Jones wasn’t a friend. Not really. Sure, they hung around with him, but they didn’t like him. He was bossy and controlling. And he always got his way.

But there was something magnetic about him, too. Somehow, he coaxed them into doing things they knew they shouldn’t.

Take the previous week, for example. They’d been playing in the loft over the Joneses’ garage when Jimmy persuaded them to walk out on the rafters. They’d be like tightrope walkers in the circus, he’d said.

His playmates went first, slowly and in single file because the rafters were so narrow. Jimmy sidled out behind them. One of the boys looked down. It was a long way to the floor, at least ten feet. He tried to back off the rafter, but Jimmy wouldn’t budge.

“Move back!” the boy yelled.

“I can’t move,” declared Jimmy. “The Angel of Death is holding me.”

For several long moments the boys teetered precariously on the rafters. They begged him to move. All the while Jimmy watched them with “a weird look on his face,” recalled one of the boys. Then, finally, he claimed the angel had released him. They all inched their way back to safety.

Afterward, the boys agreed: Jimmy Jones was nuts. They swore never to play with him again.

And yet, just days later, they were sneaking out with him. His gifts of persuasion had once again been impossible to ignore. Beneath a harvest moon they followed their leader across the small town of Lynn, Indiana. No one noticed the little group. In those days most of Lynn’s citizens went to bed early.

It didn’t take long for the group to reach the warehouse on the edge of town. The boys stopped. What were they doing here? Jimmy sprinted to the warehouse door. It was unlocked. He beckoned the others to follow. They could trust him.

Trust? None of the others trusted Jimmy. Still, one by one, they slipped into the warehouse. Slowly, their eyes adjusted to the darkness, and they saw what was inside: coffins, dozens of them.

Jimmy opened the lid of one and climbed in. He insisted the others do the same. He instructed them to just lie there. That way, they might find out what it was like to be dead. He wiggled into position, arranged his hands across his chest, and closed his eyes.

It was too much for his companions. Yelping with fear, they bolted from the warehouse, leaving Jimmy behind.

He lay there alone, absorbed in morbid revelry. What happened to you after you died? What did it feel like? And how would it feel if your soul was raised from the dead?

The boy didn’t find any answers that night. But he kept going back to the coffins.

Despite Jimmy’s magnetism, the other boys never returned with him.

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James Warren Jones had few memories of his parents’ farm near tiny Crete, Indiana. Born on May 13, 1931, he was just three years old when the Great Depression bankrupted his parents. The financial loss sent his father, a physically disabled and unemployed World War I veteran nicknamed Big Jim, over the edge.

On the day the bank foreclosed, Big Jim beat his fists on the floor. “I’ve gone as far as I can go!” he cried.

“You go ahead and cry,” Jimmy’s mother, Lynetta, replied, “but I’ll whip this if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

Moving her family to the slightly larger town of Lynn, just five miles away, she rented a cheap house and found work at the glass factory. She wasn’t the only working mother in that sleepy little town. The Depression had forced plenty of women into the role of breadwinner. But she was by far the most unconventional. In those days people in Lynn did little more than earn a living, raise their children, and go to church on both Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. Since there weren’t any African Americans, Catholics, or Jews living within the town limits, there wasn’t any reason for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to appear with their hoods and fiery crosses. (Around that time 30 percent of all native-­born white men in Indiana were KKK members.) Alcoholic drinks were not sold within the town limits, and dancing, which many considered immoral, was prohibited at the high school. Crime was rare.

Into this conservative Christian community barreled Lynetta Jones. She cursed in public, wore trousers, and puffed on hand-­rolled cigarettes. It was eyebrow-­raising behavior, especially for a woman.

Her worst transgression, at least in the eyes of Lynn’s citizens, was not attending church, and the town boasted six of them. There were the Nazarenes and the Methodists, the Disciples of Christ, the Baptists, the Quakers, and the Pentecostals. As in the rest of the state, evangelical Protestantism reigned. It was commonly believed that those who were not in a pew every Sunday were on the road to eternal damnation.

Lynetta Jones thought it all poppycock. It seemed ridiculous to her that some spirit in the sky decided who got into heaven. Those folks who went to church were, in her opinion, mindless dupes.

While Lynetta worked and Big Jim sat wheezing and in pain by the front window, their little boy wandered all over town, alone and unsupervised. Sometimes he was half-­naked. Sometimes he scampered along the sidewalks gnawing on the sandwich Lynetta had left for his lunch. He loved animals, perhaps because they gave him unconditional affection, and he could often be found playing with the neighbors’ cats and dogs.

The town’s homemakers clucked about the neglected child. Was he going hungry? When was the last time he’d had a bath? Had anyone taught him the Lord’s Prayer? They invited him into their homes, cleaned him up, and fed him. Jimmy—­not yet five years old—­quickly learned how to say or do whatever was necessary to get what he wanted. He had an instinctual ability to quickly surmise what was important to someone, and he could convince that person that he felt the same (even if he didn’t). He swore to each woman that hers was the best pie, or biscuit, or cookie. He acted polite and grateful. He played on their sympathies, spinning false tales about his father’s cruel and terrifying behavior. Having sussed out a homemaker’s interest—­needlepoint, gardening, baking—­he claimed to share her enthusiasm. Each woman felt she had a special bond with Jimmy Jones.

Little Jimmy was simply trying to survive. “Manipulation was not a conscious thing for him,” his son Stephan would later claim. But because of these early experiences, the act of manipulation became second nature, an ingrained part of his personality.

Across the street from the Jones family lived Myrtle Kennedy. Myrtle was dedicated to God. She led prayer meetings, organized church potlucks, and taught Sunday school at the Nazarene church, where her husband, Orville was pastor. With a glad heart, she followed the Nazarenes’ strict rules: no dancing, no card playing, no short sleeves or short skirts. Like many of the other ladies in town, she felt sorry for little Jimmy Jones.

One morning while Myrtle stood in the grocer’s line, she heard a neighbor talking about the child. Jimmy, now seven, had been playing on the tracks when a train came along. He’d almost been run over, exclaimed the woman. The wheels had actually grazed his cheek. The neighbor saw it as another example of Lynetta Jones’s carelessness as a mother.

Myrtle, however, took it as a sign from God. The Lord, she believed, had saved the boy so she could take him under her wing.

Now whenever she saw Jimmy out wandering, she called him in for cookies or pie. She learned his favorite meals—­macaroni and cheese, and grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup—­and made them for him. Soon he went to Myrtle’s home every day. Sometimes he even slept there overnight. Lynetta didn’t care. It kept the boy out of her hair.

She might have been more concerned if she knew her son called Myrtle “Mom.” The title pleased Myrtle, who had no children of her own. She saw herself as Jimmy’s spiritual mother. And she set out to save his soul by reading to him from the Bible. The boy—­bright and always eager to please—­soon quoted scripture back to her. She was charmed.

Eventually, Myrtle got up the nerve to ask Lynetta if she could take the boy to church.

What could it hurt? decided Lynetta. She figured Jimmy was too smart to fall for all that church baloney. Besides, without the kid around on Sunday, she could put up her feet and drink a forbidden beer or two.

That first Sunday morning in the Nazarene church felt like a homecoming to Jimmy. People welcomed him warmly. Ladies patted his round cheeks with the soft tips of their white-­gloved fingers. Men thumped his scrawny back congenially. Everyone said it was good to see him.

He slid into a pew beside Myrtle. An organ began to soulfully play, a signal that the service was about to begin. The air smelled of perfume and hair pomade.

But it was the preacher who transfixed Jimmy—­his shiny satin robe, his booming voice and fiery words. He commanded everyone’s attention. The entire congregation sat riveted. And they did everything the preacher told them to do—­stand, sit, open their hymnals, pray. Jimmy suddenly wanted to be just like that preacher. Respected. Admired. The center of attention.

After that, Jimmy could hardly wait for Sunday. He memorized everything he heard at church. Within weeks he could repeat hymns, prayers, and lengthy Bible verses verbatim. His ability dazzled Myrtle. What a whip-­smart, marvelously gifted boy she’d been called to save. He was going to make a fine member of the Nazarene church.