Seductive Poison

From Waco to Heaven's Gate, the past decade has seen its share of cult tragedies. But none has been quite so dramatic or compelling as the Jonestown massacre, in which the Reverend Jim Jones and 913 of his disciples of the Peoples Temple perished. In Seductive Poison, Deborah Layton writes about the Peoples Temple as it has never been written about before: with the keen hindsight and insider perspective of a former high-level member.

Layton had been a member for seven years when she left Peoples Temple headquarters in San Francisco, California, for Jonestown, Guyana, the promised land nestled deep in the South American jungle. It was a place where devoted Peoples Temple members believed they could escape racism and persecution from the press and the government in the United States, and live peacefully in a socialist utopia. When she arrived, however, Layton saw that something was seriously wrong.

The settlement was surrounded by armed guards, food was scarce, and members were forced to work long hours and follow rigid codes of behavior. Jones, who was becoming increasingly delusional and dictatorial, constantly spoke of a revolutionary mass suicide, and Layton knew only too well that he had enough control over the minds of Jonestown residents to carry it out.

When he finally did, in November of 1978, the news that over nine hundred Americans had swallowed cyanide-laced punch on a commune in South America shocked the world. But just six months before, Layton had narrowly escaped from Jonestown and returned the United States with warnings of impending disaster. Layton, opens up the shadowy world of cults and shows how any race, culture, or class of individuals can fall prey to their strange allure.