Aum Shinrikyo and Cults that Went Wacko

The People's Temple
Nov. 18, 1978: Mass Suicide in Guyana

In 1977, he moved his followers to "Jonestown," a property he had purchased in Guyana. In Nov. 1978, Jones ordered the murder of a visiting U.S. Congressman and then, in a spasm of paranoid megalomania, ordered his followers to drink a Kool-Aid-like drink spiked with cyanide. Those who refused were forced to or killed. More than 900 people died, including 200 or so children — and Jones himself.

Nightmare in Jonestown

• The 1992 Waco Standoff