Dr. Preston Jones: When did you first hear about Jonestown or Peoples Temple? Had you ever heard of Jonestown or Peoples Temple before this event happened?
David B. Netterville: No, I had not. I had heard of the country of Guyana, but I had not heard of Jonestown or anything about Jim Jones.
I was pretty much raised on the East Coast and all of his religious-type things were in San Francisco on the West Coast. So I really did not hear anything about it. There was nothing in the news that I was aware of.
Jones: The tragedy in Jonestown takes place the evening of Saturday, November 18th. When did the call first come—not about Jonestown—but to just pack your bags? When did that call come through?
Netterville: That happened Sunday morning—the next morning, at about 7:30 AM. I was single at the time. I lived in the barracks in the room, and I guess you can say fortunately or unfortunately, we had no cell phones in those days. No cell phones or Internet. There was nothing like that. The telephone was right there by my room and it was ringing off the wall at 7:30 and I’m like, “man, who can be calling at 7:30 on a Sunday morning?”
And so I got up and answered it. It was Senior Master Sergeant Alvin Huddleston, a great guy. Spent 33 years in the Air Force, retired Chief Master Sergeant.1 He called me.
Now, to back up with that a little bit. We were actually pulling alert to go into Nicaragua at the time to provide support and radios for communications.
We had different portable radios that we could take into places and we could set up and talk to just about anywhere in the world. So we had been on alert for that.
Jones: Because there was military conflict in Nicaragua at the time?
Netterville: Yes. In 1978 and 1979, there was an armed revolution. The Sandinistas actually took over the country from the military. The dictator’s name was Somoza. There were a lot of civil war shootings and things like that going on. So they wanted to evacuate the American and the allied country embassies.
So that’s the reason we were going to go in there on C-130s to pick up those people and bring them into Panama. We did that in the summer of 1979. We’d been on alert for that, and when I got the call, the chief said, “Dave, I need you to pack a bag. We’re leaving.”
I said, “where are we going?” He said, “I can’t tell you. It’s classified.” I go, “okay.” He said, “get the Jeep. Run over to the Army. Get the M60s and the M16s, 38s, and plenty of ammo.”
I said, “okay.” Now, when I heard that, I knew we were going to Nicaragua.
Jones: You were certain you were going to go to Nicaragua?
Netterville: I was certain we were going to Nicaragua, because it was a shooting war. So I go over and get stuff. I put on portable radios and some extra batteries—everything was battery powered.
He said, “It was a C-130. They’re pre-flighting right now. I’ve tried to get ahold of other people, but only four people were available.” One of them was the captain, Mike Massengale. He was our TALO, which is a tactical air liaison officer. He basically was the OIC officer in charge and took care of everything.
And then Senior Master Sergeant Huddleston was the NCOIC, non-commissioned officer in charge, and Tech Sergeant Wayne Dalton and I were there. We were the only four people that got on that airplane, with a radio Jeep, which is a very capable radio Jeep; you can talk UHF VHF fm, which is basically going and talking to the army. We also had an HF radio that we could talk on worldwide.
Jones: You’re in Panama, right?
Netterville: Yes, Howard Air Force Base.
Jones: So the first flight out of Panama that’s making its way to Guyana, it’s just got four of you guys on board?
Netterville: That’s correct.
Jones: That’s the leading edge of the American military response to what happens in Jonestown, right?
Netterville: We had a 10 man team in Panama. One of the individuals was on leave; one of the guys was a fishing guide in Gatun Lake, which is part of the Panama Canal zone. The fishing was great, so they were all out fishing. Normally I go with them, but this weekend outside, I’m going to sleep in late because I didn’t get to sleep late.
Jones: Let me pick up at the bottom of the memoir you wrote: you said that on the way down you stopped to refuel in Venezuela and you picked up some other personnel and these guys were dressed in civilian clothes?
Netterville: Correct.
Jones: You were told not to talk to them?
Netterville: Correct.
Jones: You say that they were probably CIA. Do you feel pretty confident about that?
Netterville: Yes. I’m very confident they were CIA because that’s their mode of operation. Normally they don’t tell you anything that’s going on. You don’t have a need to know. Normally they won’t talk to you. So when I get into a conversation and you ask questions about what’s happening, I never really know what their full duty was. I do know that they picked up a lot of things later in Jonestown, and they also flew some of the people out that had survived and they interrogated them—talked with them to find out what was going on.
Okay, now when we got on the plane, we took off around 12:30 that afternoon. Now I’m still thinking we’re going to Nicaragua. Captain Massengale and Sergeant Huddleston knew we were going to Guyana and once we got airborne and leveled off, they said, “okay, we’ll have a briefing. We’ll tell you where we’re going.” And he said, “we’re going to Guyana.” So I had to think a minute and I’m like, Guyana?
Okay, that’s going to be about a six-hour flight. “But what are we going to Guyana for?” They said, “they tasked us to go in there and pull a reconnaissance. There’s a ‘hippie’ commune that we need to go in there and find out what happened.” There are supposedly 400 people reportedly killed, and a congressman has been killed. Congressman Leo Ryan and several newsmen—a lot of the people were actually wounded.
So I’m going, “okay, are all four of us going in there?” They said, “no, the captain’s going to work in the embassy and also do coordination and basically run the show back at the airport and at the consulate—embassy.”
There are three of us and supposedly 400 people in there. And. I’m like, “man, I better have a lot of bullets.”
Jones: You’re getting this information in the air that we’ve got a congressman who’s been assassinated, others have been shot, some wounded, and the body count within 15 hours is about 400?
Netterville: That’s correct.
Jones: That’s actually going to hold for about a week, right? Because in a couple days, as you say, in here, it’s discovered that bodies are piled on bodies. And you remember hearing that—that it was some kind of hippie commune or something?
Netterville: That’s what, Sergeant Huddleston said. We didn’t know it was a religious commune, or Jim Jones or anything. No names at that talk.
Jones: So when you’re getting this briefing and you’re told that the first military forces to get into this place are going to be the three of you? Did you just assume that you were going into a firefight situation?
Netterville: Yes. They said that they were killing each other and supposedly shooting each other. They had killed a congressman and his news team. They shot up an airplane and a whole lot of people had been shot and killed. And there were still a lot of people there, and they were armed and dangerous.
Jones: Some of that info is right, obviously. But things were still a bit foggy. Did you know that this commune was American?
Netterville: No, I did not.
Jones: So you didn’t even know that?
Netterville: No, not at the time. But later as we talked, we found out it was Americans and Jim Jones.
Now, let me back up a little bit before we talk about this airplane. We got there Sunday afternoon around 5:30. It’s starting to get dark and for those of you who don’t know that in the tropics, well, you don’t have much of a twilight. It just gets dark. Just boom, 10 minutes, bam, it’s dark.
Well anyway, we get there. There’s a C-141 jet that’s on the ground, and that particular jet was there to pick up Congressman Ryan and the newsmen and the other people that were killed and bring them back to the United States.
If you’re not aware, Dover, Delaware, is the main base—Dover Air Force Base is the main base for all casualties or anyone that’s dead or whatever; that’s where they go to be processed, placed into caskets or whatever.
So this C-141 took quite a few people—the wounded, some of the folks that were not wounded, or whoever could get on the plane. And they took off.
Jones: And that was in Georgetown?
Netterville: That was in Georgetown.
Jones: So we’re looking at about 24 hours after the fact now. So within 24 hours, Congressman Ryan’s body and the other bodies from the airstrip at Port Kaituma had already been transported to Georgetown and were on the way back to the States?
Netterville: Right.
Jones: I think most of us will remember from earlier conversations, but Congressman Ryan was from the San Francisco area, where Peoples Temple was. They had received information from family members who had family members in Peoples Temple telling them that their family members in Jonestown were being held against their will and things like that. So Congressman Ryan went down to investigate that and, in the process, ended up being killed by members of the Peoples Temple, and then things just unraveled from there.
Netterville: Well, that airplane had a medical evacuation team on board, and they loaded a few coffins and some body bags on that particular aircraft. And they took off right at dusk.
Jones: Did you see that?
Netterville: Yes.
Jones: You saw that plane with Congressman Ryan’s body on it take off?
Netterville: They took off. I want to say it was around 5:40 in the afternoon.
Jones: What further information did you get after you got on the ground in Guyana? What was going on? Or were things still really foggy?
Netterville: No. Things were really foggy. We couldn’t get any really good information or intel on what was going on at the time.
Jones: You mentioned in the memoir that you went to the US Embassy?
Netterville: Right.
Jones: What was the atmosphere like?
Just as background, one of the big questions about Jonestown is what was the relationship between the government of Guyana and Jonestown? What was the US Embassy doing? You’ve got one memo that was sent from the embassy in Guyana, from a guy in the US Embassy in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, in June of 1978, saying, “basically we have a sense that stuff’s going on in Jonestown, right? And we need the government of Guyana to get involved.” The State Department says, “Look, it’s in Guyana and Guyana’s in charge of its own affairs, and we don’t want to get involved.” But, so, the point I’m getting at is that the folks in the embassy in Georgetown—they had a sense that something was going on in Jonestown, but they didn’t really have any authority to do anything about it.
I mean, what was the atmosphere like in the embassy when you got there?
Netterville: To be honest with you, I thought it was very cold. People were not very friendly at all. One of the individuals was—and let’s back up to Saturday afternoon—an individual walked up to us and we had unloaded the Jeep and the trailer and all our equipment, and that C-130 says, “we got to go.” They took off. So here we are, the four of us in a foreign country and we didn’t know anybody, no communications.
I felt like I was being deserted. I’m like, “who’s going to support us? What are we here for?” Well, maybe 30, 45 minutes later, an American individual walked up to us and he said, “hey, I’m so-and-so from the State Department. What are you guys here for?” They didn’t even know what we were there for. We said, “we’re here to do reconnaissance at Jonestown to find out what’s going on.” And he was, like, ecstatic—“I’m glad you guys are here.” So he took care of us and fed us dinner and we ended up spending the night that night at his house.
We had locked up our—all our military equipment was locked up in a Guyanese hangar on the base. So we got up the next morning and went into the embassy, but the people, like I said, were very cold. They didn’t talk to you much.
Jones: Do you think that was—I mean, you just have to interpret. But was it like, “oh, we were worried about something like what we worried might happen actually might have happened, and now we’re going to be asked a lot of questions,” and that kind of stuff?
Netterville: I find that in the hierarchy of the government, no matter what you get into, 90% of the government—they’re going to, number one, probably keep their mouth shut and not answer any questions unless they have to. Or they’re not going to tell you the complete story of what’s going on. And you’re always kind of left in the dark about what’s going on.
For example, those five CIA guys, when we landed the C-130, they went over to the C-141 where the congressman was being loaded onto the aircraft and I never saw them again for two days. I don’t know what happened to them. I don’t know where they went. I don’t know who picked them up or anything.
But the next morning we get a quick intel briefing and they still didn’t know much of anything and they said, “we are going to send you there today and you’re going to have to fly on a civilian aircraft.” That’s a Cessna 340 that they had rented to take the four of us and our equipment, and our weapons, and our camo gear. We all loaded up and we were stacking.
Jones: This was a Guyanese plane?
Netterville: It was a civilian aircraft, actually.
Jones: I mean, was it owned by the US government?
Netterville: No. It belonged to a local Guyanese aircraft company.
Jones: So the very first US military personnel who get into Jonestown get there using a Guyanese civilian aircraft, correct?
Netterville: Right. So anyways, they take us out—and we couldn’t take the Jeep, of course, so the Jeep and some of our radio equipment stayed at Georgetown, which they eventually set up to be a communications point. So we flew. The aircraft was overloaded. We had a hard time getting airborne. In fact, we ate up the whole runway and we hit the end of the runway. The nose comes up and the main gear is still on the runway. And all I remember is seeing dirt coming up out of the grass, but we got airborne.
Jones: You’re in this little civilian plane and you’re heading to Jonestown. You have no idea what’s coming up. Are you running through in your mind—okay, if we take fire on the way down, then what?” Are you thinking about all of this stuff through, like, “how are we going to get out of this thing?”
Netterville: But we were told we were going to go to Port Kaituma. That’s the airstrip.
Jones: Just for a little background, I think it’s about six miles outside of Jonestown, and that’s where Congressman Ryan and four others were killed on the airstrip.2 Several others were wounded, including a current member of Congress. He was one of the wounded there?
Netterville: Yes.
Jones: And so now when you flew into that airstrip, the plane must have still been there?
Netterville: That’s correct.
Jones: The bodies of the congressman and others were gone, but the plane was still there?
Netterville: Correct.
Jones: Did you see the plane?
Netterville: Yes, I did. It was pretty shot up.
Jones: You got inside the plane, didn’t you?
Netterville: Yes, I did.
Jones: What did you see?
Netterville: Well, let’s talk about getting to the plane. The tire on the left-hand side was shot out. There were bullet holes in the left engine. There were bullet holes on the left-hand side. The door was open, just lying down. You could get in and out of the airplane easily. One of the windows was shot out. Huddleston and Dalton said, “Sergeant Netterville, we need you to go scout that aircraft and see what’s in there.”
I was young. And I was dumb. I didn’t know what was in there. I walk up to the stairs and all I see is dried blood, which for me was kind of a shock. I walked inside the aircraft and they had shot someone in the face with a shotgun, as it looked like, because I don’t want to get too gruesome here, but there were body parts all against the wall and all up on the ceiling, and blood and brains were just all on the side of the airplane. And I hadn’t taken a breath yet. So I’m going to do my job to scout this aircraft out. So I walk in a couple more steps. I look down to see if there are any bodies in there or any weapons or anything there. And I looked and I had to leave the plane. If you ever saw anybody leave a plane in a hurry, that was me.
I didn’t even take a step. I was out. If you’ve never smelled a dead body, there’s nothing like that and that kind of heat and humidity, and this is Monday. It happened Saturday afternoon. It was terrible. The only thing I could even start to describe is how bad the smell is—for example, on a dairy farm, let’s say you got a dead cow that you’ve pulled out in a pasture somewhere. It’s set out there for a week. And it starts to deteriorate or whatever, and they smell, well.
You take that smell and multiply it by 10. That’s what a human body smells like. It’s terrible.
Jones: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing that in reality, as tough as that was, just in terms of the assaults on your senses, you’ve probably not seen anything yet until you get to Jonestown.
Netterville: Yes.
Jones: I’m guessing as you’re doing this, you’re going through this whole process. First you’re thinking, “I’m on my way to Nicaragua. Who knows what that’s going to be? Now I’m going to Guyana, and now we’re on the civilian plane heading in. Now I see the plane shot up. Now I’m inside the plane. I see that.” I’m guessing your adrenaline levels are just sky high. You’re just ready because you still don’t know what’s coming.
Netterville: Right. You have no idea. I was carrying an M60 machine gun with ammunition. The M60 machine gun weighs over 25 pounds. My adrenaline was so high, it was like carrying a small stick in my hand, because I didn’t know what was going to happen.
I’d like to talk about this picture just a little bit. I got this off the internet. The lady—you can’t tell it’s the lady—but between the two tires, I believe her name is Jackie Speier. She is now a congresswoman in Northern California. She took over Leo Ryan’s position as a congresswoman and has been one for over 40 years.3 When Jones sent his security forces with a tractor and a trailer with people with guns, shotguns, and pistols, she came out and she got shot three times initially.
She wasn’t dead. She said, “I crawled up underneath the aircraft. Between the two tires and while I was lying there, I got shot twice more.” She got shot five times. She survived. God was watching over her. There’s no doubt about it. She’s in Congress right now.
Jones: You’ve also got three newsmen. Congressman Ryan is the one furthest to the left, face down. You’ve also got a woman there named Patty Parks. She had been with Peoples Temple for some time but wanted to get out. I think there were 15 who wanted to leave and told Congressman Ryan they wanted to leave compared to the 900 in Jonestown. Fifteen’s a very small number, but Jim Jones just couldn’t handle the fact that he was losing 15 of his faithful so Patty is one of those.
Let’s go ahead. So now we’re actually getting into Jonestown.
Netterville: We waited there throughout the morning until about 10 or 11 o’clock before the helicopter showed up. And of course, in the military or any organization, a large organization, nobody gets the word till the last minute. They fly in there and shut the helicopter down, and they’re walking into the little village there to get something to eat. Well, we come walking up there, and they don’t even know who we are. “Well, who are you guys?” “We’re the United States Air Force. We’re here to go to Jonestown.” And we were told that you would take us over there because it’s, I think, six or seven miles? And they go, “really? Who sent you here?” “The American Embassy out of Georgetown.” “Okay, we’ll take you over there.”
Jones: This was the Guyanese Army?
Netterville: Yes, the Guyanese Army. There’s that UH-1 parked to the right-hand side. They’re painted yellow with a green stripe. A lot of the aircraft there are painted yellow because they’re flying over jungle areas. And if they got shot down or lost an engine or crash-landed, you’d want to be able to see them. If they were painting green, like army choppers were. You couldn’t see him.
Jones: So you get into the area on a civilian plane?
Netterville: Correct.
Jones: Now you’re on a Guyanese helicopter?
Netterville: Correct.
Jones: Which is going to get you from Port Kaituma into Jonestown?
Netterville: Right. This is approaching the picture right here, the upper left-hand corner where you see a square of buildings. Those were living quarters for the families. They’re very basic homes. They’re wooden-frame homes. All they did was nail up two-by-fours on the wall, nail some out, put a piece of plywood down and put a mattress on it. And they had a place to sleep. It was very austere. Not very much there. There was no running water.
What water we had actually came out of artesian wells that they had put pipes in the ground and come up. And then usually a pipe coming left or right where you could get water. Initially we were told not to drink the water, but I guess the second or third day we had a US Air Force Flight Surgeon come in and they tested the water and he said it’s good. So we drank the water. It was really good. Nice and cold.
Jones: Now when this image is actually in your vision, you’re still in get-ready-to-fight mode, right?
Netterville: This picture is actually taken a couple of days later. This is not when we actually went in there. But if you see the two long tent-type buildings with green colors up there in the upper left-hand corner, right next to it is a large building that has white canvas over the top. That’s the Jones temple. That’s the pavilion. That was his temple.
Jones: What a lot of people say is that when they fly in and they see all these colors all over the place—a Guyanese officer I spoke to said that he just assumed that people had hung their clothing out to dry. But then you get in closer and realize its bodies. Was that the same with you?
Netterville: Same. I could see the colors. A lot of people had on red clothing or pants or bright colors. You could see that from way out. But, and then as you think about it, those are bodies that are lying on the ground and for me, I don’t think I really said anything for quite a while. I was just- I was in shock.
Jones: Are you still in work mode? I mean, multiple military guys I’ve talked to went in even four or five days after; they’re saying when they got there, they assumed they were heading into a fighting situation?
Netterville: Correct.
Jones: Just as a heads-up to folks, we are heading to some photos that are pretty rough. I have to say Dave showed me some photos earlier that I’ll never show. But compared to those, these are relatively tame. But we can see where the bodies were stacked up.
Netterville: Now, the initial count, Chief Huddleson—I was just a sergeant. Sergeants are low on the totem pole. If they said, “go carry water over here,” that’s what I did. I was a head cook and bottle washer. We set up the radios and they went out and started counting bodies. Initial count was 400 or 450 maybe. There was no way to count the bodies that were stacked on top of each other.
Jones: You didn’t even realize that they’re stacked?
Netterville: No. We didn’t even realize it. Or bodies that had been in a ditch and had been covered up with sheets or whatever. So that was the initial call we made back. And we had a portable HF radio. It was called a PRC-47 that we’d set up. At that time, in the middle of the day, the only range we could get was back to Panama, to the headquarters. So we were talking to the colonel in charge, and Chief Huddleston said the body count was 450. No answer. They didn’t believe us. About 30 seconds later, they come back. I say, “confirm 450. That is affirmative.” And this colonel comes back and said, “is this Chief Huddleston? He goes, “yes, sir.” “Are you positive?” “It’s 450 bodies plus. Yes, sir.” And he says, “there’s no way.”
Mr. Colonel said there’s no way that there could be that many dead bodies lying on the ground. Now, we didn’t have cell phones in those days. We didn’t have satellite communications. We had a satellite in common. We didn’t have it. Very rudimentary. There’s no way he could send a text. No way he could send pictures. No internet, no computers. It was 1978, okay? All you could do is go by word of mouth. So he, once again, said, “Colonel, we have 450 dead bodies.” That’s what we’ve counted initially, and there may be more and they go, “roger that. Thank you very much for the information. We’ll get back with you out.”
Jones: When you get off the plane—do the Guyanese tell you on the way—do they say no survivors? You’re not going into a firefight? I’m just wondering what’s in your mind first when you set your foot in Jonestown? Was the first thought “get ready for a firefight?”
Netterville: My very first thought was I had seen all those dead bodies and we were told there were 900 people. Now, we hadn’t made a count yet, but we did not know if there were other people that were in the jungle or that could be hiding out in those homes or if they wanted to kill an American soldier. We didn’t know. So we’re still in a war mode and all of us were locked and loaded. We had our weapons ready and we got off the helicopter and we went on a patrol looking at houses and checking everything out—looking in the pavilion and the work tents. We went all over the whole area for the whole day.
Jones: We’ll come to the pavilion. I’ll just report what the Guyanese officer told me. He arrived—I’m sure you probably ran into him. You guys probably interacted. He was the first Guyanese officer on the scene. He said when he arrived in Jonestown, they went from Port Kaituma on foot because they didn’t want to get ambushed in a truck. So they go on foot. But he said when he got into Jonestown, in addition to this sight, what also really struck him was just how quiet it was.
Netterville: Right. It was very quiet. No birds, no nothing. Just quiet. I was told it was like they had a dairy farm or that they had animals. I was thinking maybe I could hear a cow moo or something. Nothing. It was just eerily quiet. I mean, it was like no noise whatsoever.
The only noise was the Guyanese helicopter. He shut down on that softball field that we ended up using as a landing zone. And once he shut down, all you could hear was your footsteps as you were going or opening the door or something like that.
Jones: I think usually when a person experiences something new, they relate it to something else they know. So you’re traveling to some place you’ve never been before, but you say, “oh, this kind of reminds me of something. This kind of reminds me of something I saw in some other place.” I mean, was that part of the challenge you faced when you were in Jonestown? I’m assuming you don’t have any experience to help you try to organize this in your mind to make sense of this at all?
Netterville: No. Initially I thought, “my gosh, what a travesty here. Many people—dead people just lying on the ground.” And to this day, what affects me is I saw several families, small kids and babies that were dead. They were just all lying together, hugging each other. There was one couple that had a baby under the mom’s arm; I guess a 5-year-old was underneath the dad, and they were hugging together. I just can’t believe it. How could someone do something like that? Not only were all the humans killed, but they also killed all the animals.
Jones: We’ll see some photos.
Netterville: This is a picture of the homes for families. Like I said, on the inside, they just nailed up two-by-fours and made a little frame, and the only storage area they had was up in the attic. They would keep some of their clothes up top. For the single guys and single girls, there were two large dormitory-style buildings. It was just an open bay, just a big building. And they had built bunks along the side, so that’s where the teenagers and the young men stayed. And then another building far away where the young women stayed.
Jones: Now we’re getting into some of the rougher photos. Let me just give you some background. Jones, certainly by this time, was hooked on drugs and was clearly paranoid and delusional. They had been doing mass suicide drills for some time. These people were cut off. I mean, the only news they had is whatever Jones is providing for them. They’re completely cut off. Jones is saying, for example, “the US has mercenary forces in the jungle. They’re going to come get us. And so rather than let the US government take us out, let’s take ourselves out. Let’s go out on our own terms.” And especially after Congressman Ryan is killed, “okay, this is going to trigger it. They’re going to come get us. So rather than them coming here,” as he said, “instead of the US government coming here and killing our babies, we’ll take ourselves out.”
Just one of the big questions is about the extent to which—obviously, for the babies and the kids, this is not a voluntary thing. But the question is to what extent this was voluntary for the adults. I think in some cases it was. In some cases it wasn’t. But I mean, you’ve got 909 dead in Jonestown itself.
You have some people who get out—a very small number. I think five escaped. So, anyway, now we’re looking at what’s happened. Just one last thing, and then we’ll go back to Dave. Of course, then, the tragedy is that there were obviously no US operations in the jungles getting ready to attack Guyana. In fact, the US had the intention of rescuing these folks. When I’ve talked to other military guys going down there, this was part of your mission?
Netterville: Right.
Jones: I mean, do what we have to do, but probably assume this is going to involve rescuing people, right?
Netterville: Right.
Jones: So it’s the exact opposite of what Jim Jones said. But anyway, here we are with what happened. Please tell us what comes to your mind when you see these photos?
Netterville: This picture right here. There’s the 55 gallon drum that had been cut in half. Some handles had been welded on it. This is where the great Kool-Aid quote comes from. It was actually grape Flavor Aid, which is a medical-type flavoring for medicine and stuff. And they mix the cyanide with that on the table there. It has a bucket and two white buckets. They also use that to mix things together. And the rest of the stuff is drugs and hypodermic needles. Normally he tried to get everybody to line up, come walk by, squirt it in the mouth, walk away out into this field and die. Well, you’re dead in a couple of minutes, so they didn’t get too far.
And I’m going to be honest with you, I saw a lot of things there. There were a lot of people that you could tell had been held down, made to kneel, and then held down, and syringes were stuck directly in the back of their neck.
Jones: You saw that?
Netterville: I saw that.
Jones: Do you feel confident of that because you saw bruising and things like that?
Netterville: You could tell one guy had broken his arm. It was all twisted up and everything else. And they were just lying flat—flat down, syringe in the back of the neck and they just died right there.
Jones: So you feel confident based on what you saw that at least some of these folks—not talking about the kids, I believe that’s murder—but you’re talking about older people who have a choice based on what you saw, you’re confident that some of them were murdered?
Netterville: They were murdered. And there were several people. I can’t give you a number. I do not remember. That was 41 years ago. But there were several people that had been shot in the head. It appeared to be a .38 caliber. I’m not positive, but it was some type of pistol that shot in the head or in the temple, and they just dropped right there on the ground.
I don’t know how many of Jones’ “security force” members survived. I know one of them did. His name was Larry Layton.4 And he was the guy that led the tractor and the trailer in the shootout at Port Kaituma. And he was actually shot, too, during that shootout and I understand he’s in prison. He ended up in prison, I think in Guyana. I’m not sure.
Jones: Just a question about this. Did you see only the one vat? That one particular vat?
Netterville: Yes. That’s the only one that I saw.
Jones: We’ve discussed this in class: let’s say we’ve got 900 total people. Out of those 900, 500 are physically capable of kicking that vat over. Then it didn’t happen. I mean, it didn’t happen. That’s one of the mysteries.
Netterville: I think he had brainwashed a lot of the people and, as you said earlier, had practiced mass suicide. They even went to the point of squirting Kool-Aid or grape Flavor-Aid in their mouths.
Jones: This is why your response to the sort of, the vibe—for lack of a better word—at the embassy, because there was a defector a few months before who said they’re doing suicide practice drills. But the State Department didn’t act on that. That’s one of the big questions. So you confirm, along with many other folks, that there’s just the one vat?
Netterville: That’s correct. That’s the only one that I saw.
Can we go back to that picture one more time? If you’ll look up in the kind of left-hand corner, left center by the blue barrel, there’s a lady with some red pants on.5 There’s a guy with a pair of blue jeans. There’s a guy there with what looks like khaki pants and his belly is expanded. That’s Jim Jones.
Jones: I think we’ve got another photo of him coming up.
Netterville: But anyway, that afternoon after we flew in there, the Guyanese Army helicopter—he stayed around a while and he left. He came back with Guyanese army officers. And I think maybe Rannie Johnson was one of those, but I’m not sure. But one of the individuals that Chief Huddleston wanted me to escort was the Surgeon General of Guyana, the head man.6
He walks up to Jim Jones and we knew it was Jim Jones because they gave us some pictures there at the embassy before we left. He did a field autopsy on him right there. He cut him right down the middle and took out some tissues and put them in little vials and was going to take him back to see the toxicology report on this guy. And he looked at me and he goes, “are you in charge, Sergeant?” I go, “well, no sir.” I’m a low man on the totem pole. My Sergeant Huddleston is in charge. And we’ve been talking to a colonel [name unintelligible]. That’s Jim Jones right there. And he said, “well, I’ll tell you what you need to do. If you notice, there are a couple of bulldozers in some of these areas.” They had work areas. He said, “you need to get these bulldozers running, dig a deep pit, and push all the bodies in there for a mass grave covered up with the powder that you put on them.” I can’t remember what you call it. And cover up a mass grave because it’s going to take you probably up to two weeks to get all these bodies out of here.
And it was hot. I mean, hot. And they’re going to deteriorate and they’re going to—I don’t want to get too gruesome—but they get in bad shape. Bad, bad shape.
Jones: They’re worried about water getting contaminated in the villages?
Netterville: Yes. The water and things like that. And so we need to bury this. What is that powder you put over bodies? Is that sulfur powder?
Jones I’m not sure, but I think so.
Netterville: And I said, “well, I’m going to be honest with you. I can’t make that decision. I’m just a sergeant.” And he goes, “you all need to do something today.” And he gets back on a helicopter and away he goes.
Jones: That raises another question and we’ve only got about 13 minutes left, so we’ll have to be expeditious. But I am interested in what you described. You’ve got a Guyanese officer who says, “this is what you should do,” gets on a helicopter and flies out, which indicates to me, I mean, which kind of supports something that I’ve been picking up as I’ve had a number of conversations.
I was talking to a guy who was in the US Congress who did an investigation after the fact, and he describes Jonestown as a nation within a nation.
Netterville: Yes.
Jones: A nation that was pretty much on its own and the Governor of Guyana is very hands-off. And what you described just sort of confirms that even when this thing was unraveling within the borders of Guyana, there was almost kind of a hands-off thing. This is an American story, right? What was your sense of the Guyanese role in this?
Netterville: Well, the Guyanese Army was there, and they did provide some support. But basically they just wanted to hand it off to the American forces and let us take care of it.
It was like, “okay, whatever you guys want to do.” And they gave us aviation rights to come in and land at the different airports and things like that. You just don’t go to a country. Say you go to Venezuela and start flying over their country; that doesn’t happen. You see what I’m saying?
Jones: So they were willing to facilitate us moving in and out, but as far as the operation itself, they’re eager to hand it off to the Americans?
Netterville: They did nothing to move bodies.
Jones: Here is an image of just the awfulness of it. The body closest to us is Jim Jones, right?
Netterville: Correct. He had a red shirt on.
Jones: You can confirm that he was shot, correct?
Netterville: He was shot in the temple of the head.
That’s Jim Jones closeup, and I apologize for the gruesomeness of this photo. Well but that’s how they ripped his shirt back and just cut him right down the middle and took tissues out and put some iodine on it to keep his body from deteriorating any further. But he had been shot in the head there on this side. His throne was just a step up into the pavilion.
Jones: Did you see this scene? And this is a famous photo published in newspapers, but I mean, that scene you took in with your own eyes?
Netterville: Yes, sir. I was basically there until Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday before all the other people came in. We were the only three there and we pretty much did a lot of investigative work. We looked at a lot of different things.
Jones: Did you go into Jim Jones’ cabin?
Netterville: Yes, sir.
Jones: You saw Annie Moore? Did you see a young woman in there?
Netterville: No, I did not. I did not see any bodies in Jim Jones’s cabin. But the cabins that were next to his—I suppose there was an infirmary there, and there were quite a few dead bodies in that infirmary. So one of the guys, Sergeant Dalton and I went and got a crowbar and opened up a safe that was there. You know how GIs are; you’re always looking for a souvenir. We were looking for money. Anyway, it was a pretty good-sized safe. Anyway, we got two crowbars, and we pulled that door off in five minutes. There’s no money in it. There were Social Security checks, because remember at that time you didn’t have automatic banking, so the Social Security checks that belonged to the people from San Francisco were mailed there. There were boxes of passports that they kept. And he kept the passports, because to leave the country you had to have a passport. Jim Jones kept all those and you did not get your passport back. He kept them under lock.
So, right after we did that, acouple of CIA guys show up and they were like, “what are you guys doing?” We’re looking in the safe. And he goes,” what’s in there?” I said, “I don’t know. A bunch of Social Security checks.” He goes, “what else?” I go, “I don’t know. Go look for yourself,” because these guys didn’t talk to us. They won’t talk to me. I don’t want to talk to them.
So they go in there and they start pulling out boxes of passports and that stuff’s gone. They use those to identify the bodies later at Dover. I don’t know what they did with the Social Security checks and if they returned them to the immediate families or what.
Jones: We’re going to have to go through the next pictures pretty quickly, but just one last question while we’re still in Jonestown.
Did you stay overnight in Jonestown?
Netterville: Yes.
Jones: Would you go into the jungle or move into one of the bungalows?
Netterville: I moved into one of the small homes. I slept on the foam pads. What little sleep I got. The smell was so bad. I went and found a pillowcase and I cut out a bandana like a cowboy. And I wore that probably 20 hours a day except when I was sleeping and to kill the smell. I had found a bottle of Old Spice aftershave lotion that was sitting on the shelf there in the little hooch that I was staying in. And so every morning I put aftershave lotion on that. And then I’d put it on, and then I could function and all, but all I smelled was aftershave lotion.
Jones: How long was it until other US forces arrived?
Netterville: Some came Tuesday afternoon late, but most people got there Wednesday.
Jones: And you’re in Jonestown the entire time?
Netterville: Yes, sir.
Jones: Last question, then we’ll tick through what pictures we can go through. Aside from the obvious horror of this—that’s what you’re mentioning, the woman there with her arm around the baby. And then you’ve got the animal in the back. Aside from that, is there anything else that sticks out in your mind as the most memorable thing about Jonestown? I mean, obviously this is the major thing, but is there anything else? Anything else besides this most obvious, horrific thing that really stands out in your mind?
Netterville: No, I don’t think there’s any one item. It was just the fact that it was a large area. There were so many bodies and so many children. Probably the number of children affected me more than anything. What thoughts may I have or bad thoughts do I have today? I think about the kids because they had no choice.
Jones: About a third of those in Jonestown were children. Let’s just roll through some photos so we can keep going.
Netterville: As you can see, some of these were covered up with sheets, which amazed me. So some family members, before they died, covered them up. But that’s the little hooch, as we say here. We were loading—they put the bodies into the body bag, then they loaded them onto the trailer and we’d take them and put them on CH-53 helicopters that flew back and forth.
Jones: And then, then the bodies go back to Georgetown.
Netterville: Right. And they went back to Georgetown and they loaded them onto aluminum coffins next. There’s the aluminum coffins. They would put them in there and then they would put them on a pallet, and then they’d put the pallet in the back of a C-141. That’s the C-141.
And one of the things they did when they took off—the smell was so horrendous that in the cargo area, you could actually shut off all heating. Or you’d go up into the cockpit, shut the door, and turn off everything in the back. They climb to 30,000 feet or so heading to Dover and everything would freeze to kill the smell. That’s how bad it was. And even I had a good friend, Doug Cohee; I think he’s on the website. It was bad. It was bad in Georgetown too because the body bags would leak blood and body materials out and it stunk there too.
Even when I got back there to go home to Panama, I was like, “man, I’ve never left Jonestown. It still smells.” It was terrible.
This is a tower that Jones had built on the edge where the living area was. So there’s a CH-58 helicopter in the background. We used it for logistics, and we had all our radios and stuff like that up there, and we used the tower just like an air traffic control tower.
We did flight following on every aircraft. There’s Sergeant Dalton on the left. There’s me on the right back when I had dark hair. And the radio I’m talking on can go back to that. That’s a PRC-77, an Army Ground Radio with a three-to-five-mile range.
The little antenna is a PRC-66, which is a UHF. Basically we talked a lot to aircraft flying over. We had a lot of news aircraft come over taking pictures. The air traffic control basically gave us the whole northwest sector of the country, and it was Sergeant Dalton and I; we controlled anywhere from 200 to 300 airplanes a day.
Here’s us getting ready to go back to Panama that Saturday night. We got home Sunday morning at about 3:00 in the morning.
Jones: So your whole operation is just shy of seven days?
Netterville: For the part that I was in, yes There were some people that stayed longer. I think Doug Cohee stayed 10 days. He stayed longer too because they still had the Radio Jeep and they were still passing messages back and forth for the embassy.
Jones: Mr. Netterville, I really appreciate you sharing your story. It’s a rough story, but it’s an important story. There are a lot of mysteries about it and a lot of questions from the perspective of a history class.
It’s been a real privilege to talk to somebody who was right on the leading edge of the American response to this thing.
Netterville: Well, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Jones: Thank you.
Contextual Notes
- Chief Master Sergeant Alvin S. Huddleston died in 2016. ↩︎
- Port Kaituma was approximately 7 miles away from Jonestown. ↩︎
- Jackie Speier was first elected to Congress representing California’s 12th—and later California’s 14th—district in 2008. She retired from Congress in 2023. ↩︎
- Larry Layton was not on Jonestown’s security team and did not drive the tractor to the Port Kaituma Airstrip. Layton was initially charged and tried in Guyana for murder but was acquitted in 1980. He was later tried and found guilty in the United States for conspiring to kill a congressman. He was paroled in 2002. ↩︎
- Netterville is referring to Marceline Jones, the wife of Rev. Jim Jones. ↩︎
- Netterville is possibly referring to Guyana’s chief pathologist and bacteriologist, Dr. Leslie Mootoo. Dr. Mootoo was the first pathologist to examine the deaths in Jonestown. ↩︎