Mass Suicide at Jonestown: 30 Years Later

Cult Leader, the Rev. Jim Jones
The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, as it was formally known, was founded in the 1950's by Indiana native James Warren "Jim" Jones, who preached a quasi-socialist philosophy that he called "apostolic socialism." By most accounts a highly paranoid man, Jones relocated his group to the South American nation of Guyana in 1974, in order to avoid increasing media scrutiny in the U.S. and, in his words, to create a "socialist paradise" and community based on his own communal-agrarian ideals.

• Read an interview with author and Jonestown survivor, Tim Reiterman