Word: jonestown
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Dates: during 1978-1978
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...search for answers to the questions of Jonestown...
...grisly remains of Jonestown's dead had been brought to the U.S. and stacked tidily in coffin-like aluminum transfer cases in a huge gray hangar at Delaware's Dover Air Force Base. The shacks and other buildings at the Jonestown commune in Guyana were shuttered and silent. Most of the 80 Jonestown survivors waited restlessly at the Victorian Park Hotel in Georgetown, pending a decision by Guyanese authorities on whether they would be allowed to leave or be held as witnesses, and in some cases defendants, in future murder trials...
...tragic saga of Jonestown was far from over. At Dover, teams of military pathologists, FBI technicians and civilian embalmers worked to identify the 911 corpses (the count now seemed official and final) and prepare them for burial or cremation. Yet the condition of the remains and the lack of fingerprint records for many victims meant the process was slow-and in many cases would prove futile. Autopsies were to be conducted on seven bodies: Cult Leader Jim Jones, Cult Physician Larry Schacht and five others selected at random. Officials decided that trying to pin down the precise cause of death...
...Dover feared that unidentified or unclaimed bodies might be buried near their small town (pop. 28,500) in massive numbers and become a macabre shrine of sorts. Predicted Dover Mayor Charles A. Legates: "You could expect martyrdom, hordes of people making an annual pilgrimage on the anniversary of Jonestown. We just couldn't handle that...
...letters analyzing their attitudes toward elitism, anarchy, capitalism, socialism and their feelings about sex, authority and death. More than 200 of the letters-including one written on a scrap of cardboard from a milk carton-were found last week in a box on the porch of his cabin at Jonestown. They offer moving insights into the adherents' obsessive loyalty to their leader, whom they addressed as "Dad, "and reveal minds bent upon self-abasement and sometimes self-destruction. The excerpts that follow use the spelling and punctuation of the original letters...