Jim Jones

Biography & Overview

James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American cult leader, preacher, and mass murderer who founded and led the Peoples Temple between 1955 and 1978. Jones and the members of his inner circle planned and orchestrated a mass murder–suicide that resulted in the deaths of over 900 people including 304 children, which he described as "revolutionary suicide", a term coined by Huey P. Newton, in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978, including the assassination of U.S.