Jonestown Survivor Teri Buford O'Shea Talks About the Massacre and Her Escape from the People's Temple
was just 19, homeless and hitchhiking her way through San Francisco, when she joined Jim Jones and his People's Temple.
"I had come from a very violent household and going back home was not an option," she remembers. "When I was hitchhiking up from San Francisco, toward Redwood valley, I got picked up by a man. I was starving, I hadn't slept for a couple of days -- I had been sleeping in San Francisco bus station -- and he picked me up told me he know a place where I could get food and shelter and all that. He said it was a Utopian community, where everyone treated each other as equally as possible and worked each according to their ability and each according to their need."
"I went and, sure enough, I had a place to sleep," she told Yahoo! Shine. "I slept for two days. Then I got introduced to the church."
She stayed for seven years, living and working in San Francisco and at the Jonestown compound in northwestern Guyana. She left in 1978, just three weeks before the mass suicides in which 918 people -- 304 of them children -- swallowed cyanide-laced Flavor-aid fruit drink and died.
"Those were my family," she says. "I had lived with them for seven years. I had many close friends, many people I loved, and I cared about the community, I believed in the community, but I did not like or believe in Jim Jones anymore."
In her new book, "Jonestown Lullaby," O'Shea describes in pictures and poems what it was like to live in the community, and how her experience there has affected her life since. She talked to Yahoo Shine! about it all on the 33rd anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre.
What things do you remember most about living with the group?
Working long hard hours. The long beatings. I remember the good part of the temple, and I remember the bad parts, and by the end the bad outweighed the good by far. Living in the temple and in Jonestown was a beautiful, beautiful community. It was really breathtakingly beautiful, but Jim Jones made it a living hell.
On his website, Jonestown lawyer Mark Lane calls you the "number two" and the treasurer at Jonestown. Did you have a specific role or title within the People's Church?
Not a specific role, really. I wasn't number two in Jonestown. I had my name on the financial accounts, because Jones had me sign documents that they had covered up with paper so I couldn't read them. Second in command was Carolyn Layton and Annie Moore.
Accountants dealt with the day to day money. After I found out that Jones had added my name to the accounts, I had to do transactions with someone in Panama, but I wasn't the person who dealt with the money -- I got $2 a week allowance like everyone else -- but I was the person who had the money in my name. And I made sure before I left that I had my name taken out of it. It never dawned on me to even take a penny.
Why did you decide to leave?
I wanted to leave for many years. I joined when I was 19, and I got out when I was 26. There were too many death threats, too many beatings, too much of lying and turning people against each other, getting beaten publicly. One guy had to eat a whole bowl of very hot Guyanese peppers as a punishment, so it would burn him all the way through.
I was always afraid to leave before because Jim Jones said he would kill me if I left. At one point, though, when I was in Jonestown, I didn't care if I lived another day. I did not want to live anther day under Jim Jones. I would rather be dead. So I took the chance. It was scary, but at the same time I was resolute. I wanted to leave.
I got out, I got out. I was terrified, but I got out.
How did you do it?
They were sending guns to Guyana. Another girl and I were on the radio in San Francisco at the time, receiving orders to send guns. I kept turning the dial to make it fuzzy, so I wouldn't have to hear it. "I can't understand you, sorry, can't understand you." The other girl said to me, "You know it comes through if you turn it to the right." I told her, "I know, but they don't need guns down here."
Soon after, she went down the Guyana and told Jim that I was interfering with the gun running. They summoned me, and I went down to Guyana, and I was persona non grata. People wouldn't even look me in the face. I was a traitor.
In 1978, the person who turned me in defected, and she left. I told people she was a troublemaker who had made up that stuff about me. And they believed it.
At the time, there were lots of lawsuits and newspaper articles in the states, talking about Jim Jones and others. Mark Lane came down and told everyone that there was a conspiracy against Jim Jones. When Mark was leaving, Jim sent me back with him to help fill out the Freedom of Information Act paperwork and to help the lawyers deal with everything. When we landed in New York, Mark went to Memphis where he lived. I went back to California like I was supposed to, but but packed my things and flew back to New York. I changed my name to Kim Jackson and went into hiding.
They went looking for me, didn't find me before the massacre.
How did you hear about what happened on November 18, 1978?
I was in Washington, D.C., staying with a friend. I turned on the news one night and there was the massacre.
I was horrified. I simply left the house and went running down the street, and called another lawyer. What they said was don't go back to the house. And sure enough, much later, weeks later when I went back to the house, the place had been completely ransacked.
What I didn't know then was that because my name had been on a bunch of the accounts, even though it wasn't anymore, people wanted to know where the money was. But I didn't take that information with me when I left. That would have gotten me killed.
What have you been doing since you left the People's Church?
I was a copy editor for a while in New York, then moved to Massachusetts and went into human service. I've worked with people with disabilities for the past 30 years. Right now, I'm a benefits specialist for people with disabilities. I help them learn how to access their benefits, and encourage them to go to work.
I feel good about that, I feel I can't do anything about what happened before the massacre, who I was then or what I did. But I did feel like I could lead the rest of my life in service, and that's what I've done. I've dedicated my life to helping people in need. That's the redemption that I've sought.
Your daughter, Vita, found your poems and other writings, written in journals and on scraps of paper and hidden away. What made you decide to share those personal pieces with the world?
I started typing them up, started working with them. I'd let my friends read them; they thought they showed the emotional journey through Jonestown and the journey of survival afterwards, and said it was a rare perspective on paper.
About three years ago, I stopped hiding from my past and just let it be known that I was a People's Temple survivor. I contacted other temple survivors. I thought they would hate me -- I had left close enough to the massacre that people who had already left thought I was a spy or a hit man. For 30 years I had lived thinking that everybody hated me, but they welcomed me with open arms.
I wrote the book in memory of the people in Jonestown, but also for the more universal thing. This book could bring lessons for people going through abuse or catastrophes or loss, survivors guilt, or whatever.
We weren't just a bunch of mindless lemmings running around and bowing to Jim Jones. We had real life, real work, real community, and real responsibilities. The book is half picture and half poetry; people who have seen the book said that the pictures made the poems real to them, seeing the faces of those who are no longer alive.
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