Dr. Preston Jones: Major Randy Johnson, what did you know about Jonestown before the tragedy of November 18th, 1978?
Rannie Johnson: Well, I knew that Jim Jones had set up an agricultural project in Jonestown, in the Northwest District of Guyana. He had a certain number of followers there. I knew it also because I was instrumental in providing transportation for him to go in and build some on occasion.
There’s very little that I knew about him at that time. But when I became the Commander of the Northern Sector of Guyana, I had to visit all the locations and meet the mayors and the District Commissioners and Police Officers in charge. That was when I got more information about what was actually happening in Jonestown, because it was reported to me by the Police Commander that he had been getting reports from the locals, mostly in the Kaituma area, that whenever they can speak to people there who are coming out to Kaituma to meet the boats that were delivering goods and so on, they were either scared or want to get out or feel trapped or something like that. That kind of piqued my interest more in it, because the locals hardly knew anything about Jonestown and what’s happening there. Only those in the Port Kaituma area and Northwest District were really familiar with what’s happening there. The rest of the country hardly knew anything about Jonestown.
Jones: You mentioned consultation with Jim Jones. I want to come back to that, but you were getting reports that people from Jonestown were coming into Port Kaituma and expressing fear? Was this like a week or month before November 1978?
Johnson: This was like five months before, because I took command of that area in June of 1978. So, this incident occurred in November of 1978.
Jones: So soon after you took command of that sector of Guyana, you were hearing reports pretty quickly?
Johnson: Yes, almost immediately when I went in to visit that area. The District Commissioner and the Police Officer are located in a place called Mabaruma and that’s like the central area. So that’s where I got that information.
Jones: Was there an effort to kind of maintain some surveillance of Jonestown just to kind of keep an eye on it? Or was it a sense of, “it’s just a pack of Americans; let the Americans do what they want”? Was there a desire to kind of keep an eye on Jonestown to see what was going on?
Johnson: I must say that the Police Officer told me that he would’ve liked to be more involved, but he was not allowed to interfere with them.
Jones: Some of these questions may be too sensitive. But is that because the Guyanese government did not- just wanted to leave Jonestown alone?
Johnson: You can say something like that.
Jones: One other thing related to this and then I want to come back to the consultation question. But one of the things you read in books about Jonestown is that the government of Guyana was open to having this American community in that part of Guyana because it was helpful in terms of a border dispute with Venezuela. To have a group of Americans there, I think about 30 miles from the border of Venezuela, was helpful in terms of that border dispute with Venezuela. Do you think that that’s correct?
Johnson: Well, Jim Jones came into Guyana and he located that area and he wanted to develop it for whatever reason and called it an agricultural project. However, I think I would agree that the government also took that as an opportunity. Since we had the claim from Venezuela for two-thirds of our country, it might be in our benefit to have Americans based in that area as a deterrent to Venezuela, so that makes sense.
Jones: You said a few minutes ago that you provided some consultation or had some interaction with Jonestown before 1978. What was that interaction? What did that involve?
Johnson: That wasn’t consultation, actually. That was transportation. In my capacity as the General Staff Officer of the Guyanese Defense Force, I was responsible for air transportation, and I had requests on a couple of occasions to provide aircraft to take Jim Jones from Georgetown into Jonestown.
Jones: So did you actually visit Jonestown before November, 1978?
Johnson: Never.
Jones: Had you met Jim Jones before?
Johnson: No, I had never met him before.
Jones: Had you interacted personally with Peoples Temple people before or had you only heard the rumors?
Johnson: I only heard the rumors, yeah.
Jones: Let’s come to November 18th, 1978. You were an officer in the Guyanese Army. And what was your rank at that time?
Johnson: I was a Major. Major.
Jones: And so you have command of that northern section of Guyana. Just describe for us the very first information that came through that something had happened at Jonestown.
Johnson: Well, you have to remember, this is 1978, and a lot of things were not the same. We did not have cell phones. We were actually at a friend’s residence and we were playing some cards and so on. We knew nothing was happening on that day until somebody left and came back and said, there’s a rumor that something happened in my area of responsibility.
I got the nearest phone and found out that Congressman Ryan might have been killed at the Port Kaituma Airstrip. I knew that he was supposed to be going in and I immediately got home and when I got home there were two military police vehicles with them to pick me up to take me to the airport. Nobody in Guyana knew what was going on. It was not on the news. People heard it through Radio Suriname. But locally, we were not aware of what was happening until maybe Sunday.
Jones: So, the first reports actually came over Radio Suriname?
Johnson: Yes.
Jones: From the neighboring country of Suriname?
Johnson: Yes.
Jones: Very interesting. So you have military police waiting for you at home and you knew that Congressman Ryan was going to visit Jonestown? And so they take you to the airport with the plan of flying you?
Johnson: No. They took me to police headquarters. And at the police headquarters, I met with the United States Ambassador and some of the staff and the Commissioner and my Chief of Staff and my Brigade Commander, and they were all there awaiting my arrival to give me orders to go into Jonestown.
Jones: Did the embassy staff at that time have any idea what had happened?
Johnson: Yes, they knew because a message came through. We had soldiers there and a police outpost and they had called into headquarters saying this occurred. So the police and army informed the US Ambassadors, so they all met at police headquarters to decide on a plan of action.
Jones: Then what happens next?
Johnson: Well, I was told to simply go into Jonestown and find out what’s happening in there. At that time, nobody knew anything about what was actually happening in Jonestown, because remember, the shooting took place two to four miles away from Jonestown.
We didn’t know what was happening in Jonestown. So my mission was to go into Jonestown and find out what’s happening. I asked for a plan of the area—what’s happening in there so I can plan some sort of approach or attack—because I heard the rumors of lots of guns in there.
They had no information. All I got were a couple of pictures that were taken discreetly by a couple of people of the buildings. But I didn’t have an idea of the general layout, so I wasn’t certain what kind of approach I would’ve taken, but I was just sort of going in and finding what was happening in there.
Jones: But you knew that some people had been killed?
Johnson: Yeah, people were killed at the airport. The airport was six miles out of Jonestown.
Jones: So when you were going into Jonestown, you didn’t know if you were going into a combat situation or something like that?
Johnson: I had no idea but we were prepared for it. At that stage, I had no idea what was happening. But we left Timehri Airport and flew into Matthew Ridge, which is about 18 to 20 miles away from Port Kaituma, because no plane could land at Port Kaituma because the airport was locked with the planes that were about to take off. They were shut up on the runway.
So we had to land at Matthews Ridge that night. We left about midnight on Saturday night after putting a crew of available troops on a Saturday night. I went in with about 18 men on that first leg. We landed at 2:30 in the morning at Matthews Ridge. And that’s where I met some defectors from Jonestown and they were able to fill me in about what was happening and what may have happened and there’s a possibility that people might have committed suicide. And of course I didn’t believe all of that. I thought it was just scary. And we had questions about how armed their people were, what kind of weapons they had, and what the plan was to defend it?
There were rumors that Jim Jones always told them that the Guyana Army and the US Army were going to come to attack them, so be prepared to defend it. So I got the impression that they were well defended and they were well armed. They had this tower where they could see anybody approaching and so on.
I got a lot of information from the locals who were defectors and who had walked along and who had gotten away from doing stuff. I got that information from them. The rest were actually flown back to Georgetown on that night, but one of them who had his family was left behind. So he came with me to show me—because the helicopter was sent in the next morning for me to do an aerial recon—and he came with me to show me the layout and what the possibilities were. So, there’s the idea that they were armed and prepared to protect. The pilot was not too keen on going too low.
You’ve seen the pictures of all those bodies around the pavilion. When I saw that and all those people that are dead, I said, “no, it can’t be.” I’m seeing all this color of clothing. In the Caribbean, when you see clothes like that—because we didn’t have dryers at the time—my first impression was that they were drying clothes in the sun.
Jones: So your impression was the clothing was out dry or something?
Johnson: Yeah.
Jones: They told you those were all bodies?
Johnson: Yeah. Everybody was scared to go lower, so I didn’t get close enough to determine for sure if those were bodies. I could not believe that was that.
Jones: You saw Jonestown before you got to the airstrip?
Johnson: Before the Port Kaituma airstrip? Yes. I flew over Jonestown to get an idea of the layout so I can know my approach.
Jones: And then from there, is that when you went back, is that when you went to Port Kaituma?
Johnson: That’s when I went to Port Kaituma. In the meantime, my troops were coming in from Matthews Ridge by train, but I flew in by helicopter ahead of them. When I landed in Port Kaituma, I saw Congressman Ryan and the others who were killed.
Jones: So you flew into Port Kaituma. Just sort of walk us through? You just mentioned Congressman Ryan. Just walk us through landing at Port Kaituma and then just the next few minutes.
Johnson: I landed in Port Kaituma by helicopter. I got the few troops that were based there to give me a briefing of what happened. They said as the planes were about to leave, the guys came in with a tractor trailer and started to shoot and some people were killed. Some people ran into the jungle and these are the bodies here. And they had called headquarters and told them what was happening. Remember, this is early Sunday morning, like 9:00 on Sunday morning. And this thing happened just Saturday night. Having heard that, I’m waiting for my men to come through from Matthews Ridge to Port Kaituma so that we can go into Jonestown.
I don’t have any other information except from the police and the soldiers who just met me and some of the locals near where the shooting took place. They’re also saying that these guys are all armed and dangerous.
Jones: Do you remember how many bodies there were around the plane?
Johnson: I think there were five bodies. The congressman and four more.
Jones: Did you meet any of the others who had been at the plane but had run into the jungle?
Johnson: No, I did not meet them because I was busy preparing my plans in advance attack- whatever.
Jones: I’m guessing when you saw the bodies—it’s confirmed now that people have been shot to death. In your own mind as a military commander, I’m guessing you were preparing psychologically for a combat situation at that point?
Johnson: Of course, yes. We prepared for that.
Jones: What follows then—do you get on trucks and head into Jonestown?
Johnson: No, we couldn’t go in trucks because we had to have a silent approach. It’s only six miles away and if you start driving in there, they’ll ambush you. So we walked in.
Jones: You walked in?
Johnson: Yeah. I gave my orders and the plan based on what I saw from my aerial reconnaissance. We walked in. We left around one or two o’clock. Before we got in there, we saw banana trees around this kind of perimeter area. Then we changed formation and approached [mostly unintelligible sentence].
The place was very quiet. Eerily quiet. And at that stage, I’m assuming we’ll be ambushed. So as we advanced, we saw some bodies. As we kept going forward, we saw bodies on the ground and confirmed that these people were dead. We kept advancing , no resistance waiting for opening fire, but there was nothing. From there I gave orders to my command responsibility [unintelligible] to see if there was any kind of activity. [Beginning of sentence unintelligible] about 200 yards into the jungle, and we would follow up daylight.
So the patrol went out into the jungle with microphones. [Unintelligible sentence], Everything else was dead. Cats, dogs, even the orangutan, Mr. Muggs was dead. He was shot dead.1
Jones: Just to recap what you were saying—the sound broke up a little bit—there was part of it I missed, but you said that when night was descending, you had your troops go into the jungle about 200 yards into the jungle, and you passed the night there, and then came back into Jonestown and you found what—?
Johnson: Well, yeah, the patrols came back into Jonestown. They only went about 200 yards. I told them to just go about 200 yards into the jungle.
Jones: And when you came back in, you found one man who was asleep in a latrine?
Johnson: One of the patrols from the area—as they were checking around that night—found one man alive.
Jones: They found one man alive?
Johnson: Yeah.2
Jones: And so then you go in and, and you say, not only did you see all of these bodies, but all of the animals as well, including the pet chimpanzee Mr. Muggs and?
Johnson: I think that’s an orangutan.
Jones: You mentioned in a note to me—one of the stories is that even here in the States, four days after, like November 22nd, the body count being reported on the news was still in the four hundreds.
Johnson: Yeah. I take full responsibility for that and I’m still teased about it because I could not count. When I first took over that area, the police officer showed me a safe. There were about 400 passports. And he said, “These are passports of the people in Jonestown, and they were keeping them there.” He understood that there are more than 400 and that there might be 600 people, because we understood that people are coming in by night, by boat. They didn’t arrive at the airport. They partly came—they went to Trinidad or something like that, and then they came by boat down the Port Kaituma River and came here by night without letting us know the true number of people in Jonestown. So I had this 400 figure plus in my mind.
[Unintelligible sentence]. And the numbers that I got back, when I totaled them, were like 495. So that’s the number that I sent to headquarters.
There are bodies all around and all they can do is stand at a distance.
Jones: And the guys who are counting didn’t see at the outset that you had bodies piled on top of bodies.
Johnson: No.
Jones: When you remember walking into Jonestown and seeing this, is there a memory or are there a couple of memories that stick out the most in your mind? Is there an image or two that most sticks in your mind when you think about what you saw at Jonestown?
Johnson: Well, the first thing is just surprise that this can really happen—that people would commit suicide. At the same time, you have to remember that I’m in more of a defensive state of mind. I have a mission here and I have to protect my men and I’m ready for any kind of situation. So I’m more focused on that than the bodies and what’s happening.
I didn’t even get a chance to look at the poison or anything like that yet. I was more focused on setting up a protective environmental perimeter in case there’s a counterattack. So I’m more focused there and I’m getting instructions from Georgetown and I’m sending back information.
Jones: So very much in mission mode?
Johnson: Yeah.
Jones: How long were you in Jonestown altogether?
Johnson: About 10 days.
Jones: So after a while then, you realized there’s not a combat situation?
Did you see Jim Jones’ body?
Johnson: Yes, definitely. So we went in on Sunday afternoon. I gave clearance on Monday morning or Monday noon that police and some other people could come in, and some government issues flew in that day.3 That was Monday.
On Tuesday or Wednesday, reporters came from all over the world. I had to give them clearance and that’s when they went to—I allowed them to tour. And so they came and took pictures.
Jones: And the first American troops arrived on—was it Monday?
Johnson: Yes. But I would say it was only about 8 or 10 of them, mostly officers. There were no real troops per se, combat troops. I don’t know. But observers reported what they thought because there was no combat situation anymore.
As a matter of fact, on Monday and Tuesday, people are coming in. By Wednesday, the bodies start swelling and I’m asking what are we going to do with the bodies? [Unintelligible sentence]. The indigenous people who live along the river use that water for everything including drinking. So I’m concerned about that contamination. I actually got a guy to get a bulldozer. A single bulldozer that was there [Unintelligible sentence].
Jones: Did some of the bodies get buried there temporarily?
Johnson: No. I did not touch them. The Americans were going to deal with the situation and deal with the bodies. So I didn’t do anything.
Jones: It’s interesting just because the other day I was talking to a United States Air Force guy who was one of the first to get into Jonestown, and he said that a Guyanese Officer mentioned maybe the need to bury some of the bodies because of the problems. I’m wondering if maybe you were the one he was referring to, but he said so far as he knows, none were actually buried. But that was it; the idea had been raised.
Johnson: Yeah. That was my plan, because I could not see the bodies remaining there getting worse and swelling up and decomposing. The stench was bad. We had to move into a position and go upwind because the stench was so bad. I can still smell that.
Jones: I’ve heard this multiple times. Pretty much everybody says that the smell was almost burned into your brain.
Did you see Jim Jones? It’s a terrible topic, but can you just describe what that scene was like?
Johnson: Well, the gentleman that came back in—he was brought back in by the police commissioner.4 I’ll see if I can find his name here. I don’t think it was Larry Layton because he was arrested. But the guy that came back—his family was there and all he wanted to do was to see his family. Tim Carter.
Jones: I was wondering if it was Tim Carter. So Tim Carter came back to Jonestown and you interacted wi5th him?
Johnson: Yeah. He was brought back by the police officer who came in so he could brief the police officer on what was happening. That was Police Officer Skip Roberts. His family was left behind. And all he wanted was to see his family, of course, before he told anybody anything. He did see his wife and child lying face down and went through the normal thing, crying and hugging them, and so on. And then he took us around after that and then he took us around pointing out what and who was where, and so on.
And then there was Jim Jones lying face up. When I checked his body, he had what appeared to be a gun wound behind the left ear. It was very small. [Unintelligible sentence] A typewriter there had a note in it saying, “I shot Jim Jones to relieve him of his misery.”
Jones: So you found a note near Jim Jones that said, “I shot Jim Jones to put him out of his misery”?
Johnson: Yes. That was left in the typewriter.
Jones: And was the typewriter—was this in the pavilion? Was Jim Jones in the pavilion?
Johnson: Yes, he was in the pavilion.
Jones: And was the typewriter also in the pavilion?
Johnson: Yes, it was on the table.
Jones: In my understanding is that there’s just one other person who died of a gunshot wound in Jonestown, and that’s a young woman named Annie Moore.6
Johnson: Yes, she was the only other person that was shot. She was lying close by. I don’t know her name, but I assumed that she didn’t go take the poison. She tried to run and she was shot. So.
Jones: You did see Annie—a young woman, presumably Annie Moore—who had been shot?
Johnson: Yes. The only two who were shot.
Jones: I’m guessing after these—you were in Jonestown for 10 days—you must have seen the vat with the liquid in it.
Johnson: Oh yes, of course. The hypodermic needles, the cups, the vat with the cyanide, and the bottles of cyanide. The young kids that we saw were frothing at the mouth, so we assumed that they were given a syringe or something.
Jones: You could see that the young kids had been frothing at the mouth?
Did you see the sign on the pavilion: “those who don’t know the past are doomed to repeat it”?
Johnson: Yes, that famous sign. That actually originated with George Santayana. Now, as I’m looking at you, there’s a plaque behind you. Can you, can you tell us about that plaque?
Johnson: You want me to read that?
Jones: Now that plaque was in Jim Jones’s cabin?
Johnson: Yeah, in his office above his desk.
Jones: What does the plaque say?
Johnson: Let me read it for you.
It says, “Reverend Jim Jones, this plaque will hopefully serve as a reminder of the love and appreciation we have for our pastor. He has shown great concern for happiness and well-being. He has seen to our material as well as our spiritual needs. But most importantly, he has—through sheer hard work—lifted us out of a world of hopelessness, fear, and despair, and into a life of security, content, and peace. He has made life worth living for a multitude of us who were sick and in pain. But who, because of his enduring efforts, have had their spirit and health renewed and look forward to each new day with youthful enthusiasm. Presented on this 25th of September, 1976 on behalf of the Senior Citizens Association of Peoples Temple Churches. Virginia Taylor, President.”
Jones: It’s so hard to believe because my guess is that people wouldn’t do that, and they wouldn’t say that if there wasn’t some sincerity to it. I’m actually reading a collection of letters now. We mentioned Annie Moore. I’ve read letters from Annie Moore and her sister talking about how much they liked Jonestown. It’s interesting because Annie—you read letters from her when she was in San Francisco before, and the letters have a lot of complaints and things. But then when she gets to Jonestown, her letters change. She does seem to be more at peace. She does seem to be enjoying life more.
This is not really part of your mission, but I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts about this. It’s so hard to understand because it does seem that a lot of people really found this to be a very meaningful thing, and yet it ended in what you saw. I don’t know if you have a response to this or not, just your own thoughts, but it’s just so hard to understand. How did this happen?
Johnson: Well, when I got in there, I went to what was considered a radio room, and I found a lot of audiotapes and I played some of them. They were recordings of some of the things that Jim Jones announced. He controlled the whole media. He kept them up to date with what he considered world news. And of course it was all very negative about the United States and they were glad to be here in this place where it’s safe and everyone is equal and there’s no bigotry and so on.
In my opinion, any letter that left Jonestown was good [unintelligible sentence] because there’s no way you can really get that.
Jones: Your thought is that the letters that leave Jonestown probably go through some sort of censorship process, something like that?
Johnson: I would think so except for those that were sneaked out. Some guys came to Port Kaituma and they did interact a bit with the local people.
Jones: And you did mention at the outset this, this other fact that already in June you’re hearing reports that people are saying there’s a problem in Jonestown? That’s the other side of the story. There clearly were people who were not happy.
Just as we begin to wind down, you mentioned Jim Jones’ body. You find the plaque in his office. When your mind goes back to Jonestown, what are the things that most stick out in your mind? You’ve mentioned the smell. I imagine that’s probably a major thing. The syringes, the vat, and the sign. Are there other things that really stick in your mind when you think back on this experience?
Johnson: Well, on the positive side, I’d like to give a lot of credit to Jim Jones. To be honest with you, he set up a jungle outpost. When I took it over, I put my battalion in there because everything was there that I needed for a battalion location. I would’ve taken it over, but I was denied that and it was given to the Youth Corps. I had a smoke room. They had an underground shed where they kept the bananas and butter. He had big freezers and a kitchen. They had a smoke room where they smoked meat. They had a big chicken farm and pig farm. I was impressed. I was prepared to take it over and run it myself.
Jones: Yeah, I’ve heard that. I’ll just summarize what you were saying because the sound broke up a little there. You were just saying how—I’ve heard this before—how impressive it was that this community had gone down there, had traveled thousands of miles with almost a thousand people, and had created this functional community in the jungle with roads and a smokehouse. And after this event, you asked the government to let you take it over to make a military barracks or something like that.
Johnson: Yeah.
Jones: That’s how impressed you were. But you said the government did not do that. What happened to Jonestown in the immediate aftermath?
Johnson: They handed it over to the Youth Corps of young people that they were training in the country. The plan was for them to live there and develop their skills and so on. That didn’t go too well because the jungle thickness took over back anyway.
Jones: So that was a short-lived experiment then that didn’t last very long.
Johnson: Yeah, it didn’t last.
Jones: You said early on that most Guyanese really didn’t know about Jonestown. What place does the Jonestown tragedy have now, if any? What place does it have in the kind of historical memory of Guyana? So for example, a typical 20-year-old in Guyana today, if you say Jonestown, will that ring a bell? Do the Guyanese consider Jonestown part of Guyana’s history or is that just something that’s really not part of their country because it was a bunch of Americans?
Johnson: You mentioned a 20-year-old and I don’t think that Jonestown would mean anything to him at all. I don’t think it would mean anything to a 40-year-old at all. I think it is more external because when it happened, and the shock that we had—most people did not know of Jonestown. We didn’t have television at the time either, so we weren’t able to see those things. You had families calling in from all over the world telling us what we were seeing. My mother called me and told me what she saw. So to Guyanese, it’s not big. It happened, but it doesn’t affect us because only Americans were killed there. So it’s not a Guyanese thing. It just happened in Guyana. So I don’t think the Guyanese have the same vision or memory of it. As a matter of fact, they think of it as a bad scar or history because most people, even when I came to the States, Jonestown put Guyana on the map. So externally there’s a connection, but internally, there’s none.
Jones: There is a photo of you that I have and you’re at the Jonestown Memorial. Is that the one in Oakland, California?
Johnson: Yes. I visited there two years ago and I wanted to go by and see that.
Jones: Over the years, have you taken an interest in the story of Peoples Temple? There are a lot of books and documentaries. Is it something that you have kind of been interested in over the years?
Johnson: Yes, I have been interested in it. I have books and I have videos.
Jones: It must be strange for you. Unlike me, I talk to people about it, and I look at pictures about it, but you’re actually one of the small number of people who were actually there.
Johnson: Well, I consider myself the first person to see what was happening, because when we came in with the helicopter that Sunday morning, that was the first sighting.
Jones: And for that reason, it’s a real privilege to talk with you. And I hope that—as you say, among the Guyanese—this isn’t a topic that has the same kind of power it has in the States, but I do hope that other Guyanese who were involved will be encouraged to share their stories. The voices from that side of the story just haven’t been included much. And so for that reason, I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to share your memories with us.
Johnson: I think the only other people that would have anything constructive to say about it would either be- maybe the politicians that were involved with them or the Department of Agriculture because it was supposed to be an agricultural project. Those people did visit. But whenever a visit took place, it was an orchestrated visit so you don’t see everything. If you went into Jonestown, you were invited and you get the mission to come to you. So what you see is not what you get.
Jones: And that applied to Guyanese government officials as well, that they just couldn’t show up at Jonestown? The understanding was that they had to let Jonestown know that they were coming?
Johnson: That’s my impression.
Jones: It’s just an interesting thing how that could be. This book hasn’t been written on the sort of government involvement. The story of Jonestown kind of in relation to US Guyanese relations—I’m not aware that that’s been written. But I’d have to do some searching.
Johnson: But I don’t really see a Guyanese-American relationship there in terms of Guyanese working for America on this project, because it was Jim Jones as an individual. He didn’t come from the US government or he didn’t have any approval in the US government. He came down there and liked this place for whatever reason and he brought the people down and I don’t think the US government had much to do with it.
Jones: No, not with that. It just sounds like, from the point of view of the Guyanese Government, that it was just a very hands-off sort of thing. Just let Jonestown be Jonestown.
Johnson: Well, the other thing about that is that the government at the time was trying to encourage Guyanese to move into the developing inland country. [Unintelligible sentence]. The fact that he was closer to Venezuela, which, as Americans, helped Guyana. And they showed other people what you can do by moving into the interior—you can develop this place and you can expand it. Of course, we can move away from the coast, which is getting overcrowded. Yeah.
Jones: So by helping to develop a part of the interior, especially close to the border of Venezuela, did Jonestown serve a Guyanese interest?
Johnson: Yeah.
Jones: Well, Major Rannie Johnson, I really appreciate the time. It’s been a real privilege to talk with you and thank you very much for taking the time.
Johnson: And this is my first interview, so thank you too.
Contextual Notes
- Mr. Muggs was a chimpanzee. ↩︎
- Two survivors were found alive in Jonestown following the mass murder/suicides: Hyacinth Thrash and Grover Davis. ↩︎
- A few press correspondents, such as Mohamed Hamaludin representing the Guyana Chronicle, and Frank Johnston and Charles Krause representing the Washington Post, were allowed to visit Jonestown on Monday, November 20. ↩︎
- Assistant Commissioner for Crime, Cecil A. “Skip” Roberts. ↩︎
- Survivors Tim and Mike Carter, Mike Prokes, and Odell Rhodes returned to Jonestown on Monday, November 20, to identify bodies. ↩︎
- According to A.C.C. Cecil “Skip” Robert’s testimony at the Guyanese government’s inquest into the Jonestown deaths, the body of an unidentified “Caucasian male of about 6 feet tall” was found in a cabin resembling a psychiatric ward. No other information regarding this individual has been found. ↩︎