this is the way jonestown looked the day it died, november 18th, 1978. >> die with a degree of dignity. lay down your life with dignity. >> a self-proclaimed religious paradise in guyana in south america. carved out of the jungle by jim

jones, a man who called himself god. >> how very much i've loved you. how very much i've tried my best to give you the good life. >> who convinced his followers to kill their children and then kill themselves. >> let's just be done with it. let's be done with the agony of it. >> drinking a kool-aid-type fruit punch laced with deadly cyanide. >> this is something to put you to rest. oh, god. >> 30 years later in a place where words could kill and did, there is silence. an empty field, the people gone. almost no trace of their lives or dreams.

this is the site of jonestown's open-air meeting hall where i'm standing right now, where the reverend jim jones led his followers into the worst mass murder and suicide pact in america's history. only small golden flowers grow where bodies once lay. on that fateful morning there are more than 940 people living in jonestown. by nightfall only 33 would still be alive. for most of the few who did survive, it took incredible courage to defy jim jones and step away. this is their story. one of desperation and daring and in the end a story of human triumph amid horrible tragedy. >> it was a slave camp ran by a madman with a huge ego. >> as a young mother leslie wilson went to guyana because her husband had taken their son there. in jonestown, she found not enough food, not enough sleep,

too much fear. >> for me to think i was going to see the age of 21 was a miracle. i didn't think i was going to see 21. >> she recoiled the first time jim jones called together peoples temple members for a suicide drill. >> and i remember him looking at me and me looking, please, don't ask me to do this because we really didn't know if it was real or not. >> on the last morning she said she wanted to take her child on a picnic and started on a day-long trek to a town 30 miles away. >> everyone can look up and see us walking, and i was just shaking. i was so, so frightened. >> for years, leslie wilson would not let anyone know she was a jonestown survivor. >> because i would sit at the table sometimes at work, whatever, and they would talk about jonestown. i didn't say a word. i mean, i lived under a veil of secrecy for 20-something years.

>> vernon gosney, now a policeman in hawaii, remembers jonestown as an armed camp supposedly to guard against outsiders. >> but many of the times the guns were pointed towards us. >> gosney wanted to leave as soon as he arrived but couldn't until a california congressman, leo ryan, came to guyana in the fall of '78 on a one-man investigative mission. >> i had decided i was going to pass a note asking for help to escape. >> by that next afternoon, as gosney dragged his trunk towards a departing truck, more than a dozen others had decided to go. >> i thought i was going to die at any moment. i never thought that i would ever be permitted to leave. >> when the group reached the small airport nearby, gunmen opened fire. >> there was blood everywhere, and i thought i'm dying and then i blacked out.

>> that same day, gerald parks, seen here in the blue and white shirt, talking with jim jones, sensed it was his last chance to get his family out. >> you can feel death in the air. you can actually feel it. >> the parks family asked to fly back with congressman ryan's group. >> and i told him who i was and i said we've been held prisoner here. >> at the airport, a tractor pulled a farm wagon up alongside their plane. >> about five or six guys stood up and pulled their guns up and started firing at us. i heard my mom holler, my god, look at patty. >> jerry parks' wife was killed and so was congressman ryan and three newsmen. parks ordered his daughter tracy, her older sister and three other youths to run for

safety into the jungle. >> we ran too far, and, of course, it's so thick that, like, once you get so far you can't -- you get lost in your direction. >> before night came, we went back to the jungle and started hollering for the kids and no response. and i thought oh, my god, don't tell me they're lost. >> i was the organizer, and anything that needed organizing they gave to carter. >> tim carter, seen here in '78, was a trusted aide to jim jones. he saw jonestown through different eyes. >> it was beautiful. i mean, something about nature, being in the jungle. it was beautiful. >> carter stayed almost till the end. he saw the gunmen come back from the airport.

>> the tractor-trailer that had come from the airstrip came up behind and stopped at the kitchen. and these guys jumped out and he said we got the congressman. >> that's when the reverend jim jones told his people this would be the day they'd have to die. >> the congressman is dead. please get us some medication. it's simple. it's simple. there's no convulsions with it. it's simple. just please get it. >> the children were killed first. >> tim carter saw his 1-year-old son poisoned. >> malcolm was dead. his little lips covered with foam. this is what happens with arsenic and cyanide as it foams at the mouth. >> he held his wife as she died. >> i put my arms around gloria as she was holding malcolm and just kept on sobbing, i love you so much. i love you so much. >> carter lived only because he was sent away on a final errand. he came close to shooting

himself that night. >> and i knew that i would never get the sounds and the smells and the sights of jonestown out of my mind ever again. >> so few survived jonestown. for most only by determination borne of desperation. for others by a twist of circumstance. over the next two hours we will follow the lives of these survivors, then and now. "escape from jonestown" continues. ecome doers. when our mittens double as work gloves. and we turn every room into a project. but this year, let's trim the budget. get some help from martha stewart that we can't get anywhere else. and spread our money as far as our cheer. ♪ more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot.

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no doubt as to who he thought he was. >> when i say, i'm god, then i feel it well up in my soul and i see it well up in you and i see the sick healed and the blind see and the dead raised. >> in truth, he was a liar, a charlatan, a phony faith healer. this from the same sermon in 1972 talking about a 90-year-old with a bad leg. >> his leg was healed instantaneously because he saw me as god, god, god, god, god!

>> watch this woman who jones said had a broken leg. a helper cuts through the cast. >> now the leg was broken yesterday? now run! >> jones asks if she feels any pain. >> jump up and down real quick. no pain whatsoever. that's it. >> they traveled around the country and held these meetings, pulled these fake healings and fake miracles and people would shell out money like you wouldn't believe. >> this is jerry parks as he looked back then. he was fooled for years. >> but it was all through lies and fake healings and all that stuff. the man was fake. i know now that he was fake from the beginning.

>> by his own account, jim jones was born on the wrong side of the tracks in a small indiana town in the depression years. at 21, jones became a student pastor by taking a correspondence course. within a few years he had started his own church in indianapolis. named it peoples temple and opened its doors to african-americans. he and his wife marceline became an interracial family through adoption and embraced racial harmony in an era that resisted it. but even then jones preached of catastrophe. >> at that time the cold war was going on, and he was saying a bomb was going to fall and there would be a nuclear war. >> in the mid-'60s, jones moved his church outside the town of ukiah in northern california. >> he got this revelation to come to ukiah, california.

and there was a cave out here. >> a cave in the hills around redwood valley that would shield everyone from nuclear fallout. >> i know now as sure as i'm sitting here and i knew and have for a long time there was no such place. it was all one of his lies. >> jones built this church and offered sanctuary there, a safety net to the elderly and poor, usually blacks from the inner city. they signed over their social security checks and the people's temple cared for them for the rest of their lives. >> he built this whole thing on the premise of brotherhood, economic equality and a world where no babies go to bed hungry. >> jerry parks and his family followed jones from the midwest out to ukiah in 1966. jerry got a job in a supermarket. >> he started talking about everybody giving 25% of their income.

i sat down one time and figured after i got back how much money i gave that man, and it was around 76,000 bucks. >> his youngest daughter tracy learned to fear jones when she started school and was told to stay away from other children. >> if you got caught talking to people that were not affiliated with the church then you would be in trouble for that. >> trouble at jim jones' wednesday night meetings. he called them catharsis, the purging of evil. >> so i was scared to do anything wrong because i was scared i would be called up and be beaten. >> leslie wilson was 13 when she first encountered the people's temple and the hold it had on members. what happened in catharsis? >> if you were doing something incorrectly which nine times out of ten someone would find something you did incorrectly you would be called to the floor and disciplined. >> how?

>> either by a paddle or being spanked. >> you were hit? >> uh-huh. >> in front of the whole church? >> oh, yes. >> grown people? >> yes. >> spanked? >> yes. >> who did the spanking? >> whoever he deemed to do it. >> her mother joined the people's temple as a haven where leslie's sister michelle on the right could get help for her drug problems. as a minister, leslie said, jim jones could be spellbinding. >> he could quote scripture and turn around and preach socialism. he appealed to anyone on any level at any time. >> even so, racial equality came with exceptions. >> the majority of the congregation was african-american. >> the people who ran the church, the leadership, were they majority african-american? >> no. they were majority caucasian. >> the dark side of jim jones was always there. what did you have to call him? >> father.

>> like he was god? >> correct. >> jones would boast openly in church about his sexual couplings with both women and men. >> for me sitting there listening to it, i thought it was insane. and i don't understand, soledad, why my mother didn't grab our hands and run like crazy when he spoke of having sex with men and women in the pulpit. i don't know what drove her to stay. i'll never have that question answered. >> just ahead, rehearsing suicide. >> five minutes later jones says, you've all just been poisoned. you have an hour to live. thank you for calling usa pmy name peggy. peggy, yes, i'd like to redeem my reward points for a gift card. tell points please? 250,000. calculating... ooh! answer: five fifty! 550 bucks?! 5 dollar, 50 cents. minus redeeming charge. leaving 50 cents. say what?

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this is the people's temple membership, now numbering in the hundreds in redwood valley, california, in the '70s. by then tim carter was already getting an early taste of how it would all end. >> we had a very small vineyard on the ranch in redwood valley. and they said, hey, grapes would come in from the ranch and we'd have some wine, does anybody want some wine? and so each of us got this styrofoam cup filled with -- three-quarters filled with wine and drank the wine and like five minutes later, jones says, you've all been poisoned. you have an hour to live.

>> it was a test for jim jones' trusted inner circle. they did not panic or resist. >> now when i look back on that whole thing now, you know, you think that might have been the wake-up call that it was time to get out of dodge? yeah, absolutely. that should have been -- i should have been gone the next day. >> carter stayed on. he was a marine vet who survived some of the worst fighting in vietnam. he came home bitter, a cynic, a hippie and joined the people's temple in 1973. that same year, jim jones reached a deal in guyana to begin clearing land in the jungle for a future settlement he would call jonestown. jones chose guyana because its government was socialist, its people black and english-speaking. it is a small country, not even a million people on the north coast of south america.

>> beautiful promised land. >> beautiful promised land. those were jones' words for his creation, a place where he and his people could practice socialism, live in harmony and answer only to themselves. >> we wanted to have a better world. you know, a better society, one without racism, sexism, ageism, economic equality for people. >> verne gosney joined the church in california about that same time. he and his wife, an interracial couple, were welcome. >> the people's temple was a rich tapestry of people. they were people who had survived adverse situations, racism, discrimination, just very difficult lives, and they had triumphed to that point. >> in 1975, jones moved his church headquarters from redwood

valley down to san francisco to a larger stage where he became a political force and a face in photo-ops. >> roslyn carter was campaigning for jimmy carter. i believe that was 1976, and there was going to be a rally downtown. literally, we stuffed the building. we were the rally. >> this photo of tim carter with the woman he loved, gloria, was taken at the golden gate bridge during another public appearance. >> when jim jones was asked to give the benediction for the new suicide prevention barrier that had been erected. >> that's right. only a year before jonestown took its own life, jim jones was praying over a suicide prevention barrier. in that summer of 1977, jones was facing increasing criticism from some members who fled the

church because they no longer believed in jones. when "new west" magazine published an expose article about church beatings, jim jones suddenly decided to leave the country. he began putting his flock on planes to south america, by the dozens, day after day. teenagers and young children were among the first to go. parents followed. >> i got this phone call that says, it's time for you to go, and this voice entered my head that said if you don't go now, you will never see your child again. >> leslie wilson had become pregnant at 18. this is her son jakari. the father took the boy to guyana first so leslie followed. what was it like in guyana? beautiful? paradise? >> not paradise by any means. >> did it feel like you were in captivity?

>> oh, right away, right away. your passports were taken right away, seized. >> and this did not raise red flags or it did? >> it did. in your heart of hearts you had to know that there was no way out. there was no way out. ♪ >> tim carter praised jonestown in this testimonial. >> it's beautiful. i can't -- i've never been so totally happy or fulfilled in my life. >> as long as he was not being eaten up by bugs. you could see him scratching the bites. these are home movies made by jim jones to attract church members to his namesake. >> american bananas are nothing like these. >> he showed off the supplies.

>> flour, flour, rice, black-eyed peas. >> and then this. >> kool-aid. >> kool-aid. the reality of jonestown, hard work, long hours, too much heat, too little sleep, and as leslie wilson remembers, meager food. >> dinner was rice and gravy and sometimes soup with chicken feet sticking out. >> she wrote this letter to a friend there in jonestown. >> i now feel as if my whole is being worthless here. i'm now 21 years old and my life will surely consist of nothing more than it does now. >> at the bottom she wrote -- >> destroy this now. >> but at a wednesday catharsis meeting -- >> my letter was being read by jim in front of the whole congregation, and if i could have crawled in that guyanese soil and dug a hole so deep, i would have done it. i was just in fear.

>> your best friend turned you in? >> my best friend turned me in. >> as punishment, leslie was placed on a hard work detail. for her the promised land was a failure. >> we're not going to make a difference in the world because no one knew about us. no one cared. we were just this bunch of folks living in the jungle, surviving. >> the utopia was a hoax? >> it was a hoax, and that realization itself was overwhelming. >> when we return, a secret plan to kill. >> cyanide is one of the most rapidly acting poisons. i would like to give about two grams to a large pig to see how effective our batch is. ♪ ♪

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i'm don lemon. here are your headlines.

poen benedict xvi has okayed the use of condoms in certain cases to stop the spread of aids. this is seen as a shift away from the catholic church's absolute ban on contraception. in his new book, he says the use of condoms is okay when the sole intention is to reduce the risk of infection. with thanksgiving travel getting under way, president barack obama weighed in on the growing protests against full-body skans and patdowns at airports. but he says the enhanced security measures are necessary for your safety. the president says the tsa has been under intense pressure to tight b security after the attempted underwear bombing on christmas day last year. and right now, these measures are the most effective. north korea has built a nuclear plant to enrich uranium. an american scientist saw the

plant in person. administration officials tell cnn if true the plan is, quote, yet another provocative act of defiance by the north. those are your headline this is hour. i'm don lemon, keeping you informed. cnn, the most trusted name in news. as soon as jerry parks arrived at the entrance to jonestown in the spring of 1978 with his wife and youngest daughter, he saw guards with guns. >> i seen those armed guards. that's when my heart fell. i knew then -- i didn't have to wait until i got to jonestown. i knew then that i had made the biggest mistake of my life. >> reverend jim jones' home movies helped lure parks and his family to guyana.

>> it was going to be a city right in the middle of a jungle and made it sound like really a paradise. >> instead, he found -- >> hell on earth. >> jerry parks complained about the heat, the food, the confinement. >> life don't get any worse than that. that was literally a jungle prison. >> in front of the congregation, jim jones told parks -- >> the only other thing you can do is either adjust and walk through the jungle and it's meet snakes and panthers and all that [ bleep ] and one wants to do that and guns. can be arrested by police and be put in a federal penitentiary. >> jones would punish parks. >> he called me up front and he says, i hear you want to go back home, and he started beating on me. he had two, three security that were karate experts hammering on me pretty good. >> parks was put on a hard work

crew out in the hot sun digging ditches. in jonestown, even his 11-year-old daughter tracy parks got up for work before dawn each day. >> i had to work in the rice fields. you had to use a big machete or the big rake that had the knife at the bottom and you had to cut the grass down. >> one day she went to the infirmary with an earache. >> and they looked in there and pulled out a cockroach the size of my -- half of my thumb, huge. >> tracy parks saw no future in jonestown. >> i knew that in the first month there that i'm stuck here and that i'm most likely going to die here. >> verne gosney came a month after the parks. he brought his 4-month-old son mark. his wife had fallen into a coma during childbirth and never came out.

gosney sank into a haze of drugs. >> i did use heroin. i used amphetamines. i used cocaine, marijuana, lsd. >> he came to jonestown to get clean and did. >> their idea of a drug treatment was, you know, work you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and if you mess up, beat your ass. i mean, that's their drug treatment program. >> he soon found jim jones controlled everything. >> it's a dictatorship. it was supposed to be a socialism, but it really was fascism. >> jones' own words. >> this organization is built upon the dictatorship and i am [ bleep ] very much in control. >> jonestown was failing. not much grew in the fields. most food had to be shipped in. and jim jones had begun to talk about another move, to communist russia. ♪ long live this socialist dream ♪

>> that's beautiful. >> church members were told to learn a new language. >> you had to say something in russian before you could get anything to eat. little old ladies coming up, older people, elderly people, you know, they couldn't do it. they couldn't memorize anything and he'd turn them away. >> yet unknown to parks, unknown to gosney or almost anyone outside the inner circle jones was already preparing for their death. this is a memo written to jones by the people's temple doctor six months before the mass suicide. it reads in part -- >> cyanide is one of the most rapidly acting poisons. i would like to give about two grams to a large pig to see how effective our batch is. >> the test apparently was never carried out, but that's not the point. while in guyana we made a startling discovery. the church had been buying cyanide long before most of the members arrived here in jonestown.

cnn has learned that for at least two years the church was buying a quarter pound of the deadly poison each month. by the time congressman ryan first began raising questions about jonestown, six pounds or more of cyanide had already been shipped here, strong evidence that the reverend jim jones had been plotting the death of his followers long before that fateful day. we're told jonestown had obtained a jewelers license to buy the cyanide which can be used to clean gold, but there was no jewelry operation in jonestown. in that last year, jones never left the jungle camp, a prisoner of his own making hiding from a court custody fight over this young boy he claimed he sired by another man's wife. jones would summon his people to mass meetings they called white

nights and rant about suicide if under attack by the cia or the guyanese army or other unknown forces. >> if you're not prepared to die for your children, you will not stand up for your children. >> for months jones will tell parents their children might have to die. >> at some point you will sacrifice your children. you have to make that commitment. >> at one meeting jones tried to get jerry parks to promise to kill his daughter tracy if the camp were invaded. >> how old is your child? >> 11. >> at 11 unless it came to an overwhelming invasion. then we would gently put them to sleep which we have and they would never know what has hit them. we've already prepared for that are. >> and i thought, you know what? am i the only one in this cotton-picking group that's got the guts to stand up and say, no, i don't want to commit suicide? >> from that moment on jerry parks said, he knew he had to get his family out.

>> i knew those white nights he was having was fake at the time, but i also knew that one day one of them would not be fake. >> next, running away from death. >> i was horrified. i was so, so scared. [ male announcer ] at&t introduces a new windows phone. with beauty... ♪ ...and brains. ♪ a phone that gets you to the stuff you love faster. only from at&t. rethink possible.

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in mid-november 1978, congressman leo ryan flew to south america to see jonestown for himself. >> i'm from the united states government, and we're here to

inquire into the health and the welfare of american citizens who are here. >> a number of ryan's california constituents were complaining that relatives were being held captive. his legal aide jackie speier who made the trip with ryan was worried about ryan's own safety. >> i placed his will, which i had custody of, in my top desk drawer. >> reverend jim jones was worried some of his followers might try to leave. he warned the members. >> see if you can make it to any railway. see if you can get to any passport. try. i dare you to try. you don't know who you're talking to. just because i don't use the language of the church, i am that which they call god. >> that audiotape, like many others, was found later in the radio room of jonestown recovered by the fbi.

>> i will see you in the grave, many of you. >> by now jones was deep into drugs himself. an autopsy would show so much barbiturate abuse it should have killed him. church member verne gosney. >> i do know what a person sounds like when they are very impaired from either drugs or alcohol, and he was. at one point he actually needed help walking. >> the day before congressman ryan arrived, jones said this -- >> i'm going to shoot them in the ass so bad for so long that i'm not passing this opportunity up. i don't care whether i see christmas or thanksgiving, neither one. you don't either. >> when ryan entered jonestown that friday, leslie wilson was waiting for the first chance to run away. >> i remember going to the kitchen and grabbing a butcher knife and sticking it down the front of my pants.

♪ that's the way of the world >> jonestown put on a musical extravaganza that first night in this open-air pavilion. ♪ >> an nbc news camera team accompanied congressman ryan. you're watching their footage. >> i can tell you right now that the few conversations i've had with some of the folks here already this evening that whatever the comments are, there are some people here who believe that this is the best thing that ever happened in their own life. >> the cheering lasted more than a minute. desperate to leave, verne gosney mistook nbc reporter don harris in the blue for a ryan aide. >> i tucked a note in his elbow as he walked by and the note dropped to the ground, and i picked it up and gave it back to him and told him you dropped

something, and a small boy then shouted, you know, he passed a note, he passed a note. >> it said, help us get out of jonestown. >> when i heard that i think verne gosney had passed a note that he wanted to leave, we were just like, oh, my god. >> as word spread, tension grew. time was running out on jonestown for all the children and everyone else. yet their last night on earth would end in song. ♪ no matter what they take from me they can't take away my dignity ♪ >> jones forced the reporters to leave and go back to the nearby town of port kaituma. ryan and his aide jackie speier spent the night in jonestown. >> and i was awake a good part of the night thinking, how quickly can we get out of here tomorrow?

>> leslie wilson was thinking the same thing. a small group of black members hoped to walk out that next morning to go on a picnic, so they said. but at first her husband, joe wilson, seen here in yellow, a top security guard for jim jones, told her she could not take their son jakari but suddenly he handed the boy back to leslie. >> and we immediately started taking off. and so to say i was panicked is -- i was horrified. i was so, so scared. >> nine of them left. these five adults, plus three young daughters in one family and leslie's 3-year-old son. >> and i started carrying him tied to a sheet on my back. >> they had to climb a hill in the open to leave. >> everyone can look up and see us walking. i was just shaking. i was so, so frightened. >> they heard a truck approaching as they reached the thick jungle near the entrance to the compound.

>> we dove in and hid the kids. diane, who worked in the pharmacy, had made -- this so ironic -- a cocktail of valium and kool-aid for the children to keep them calm. >> the truck was bringing the nbc crew and other reporters back to jonestown that saturday morning. >> actually we were so close to the guard shack that we could hear their voices and hear their conversation. >> the truck passed and leslie's group found the railroad tracks nearby. that led to another town almost 30 miles away. >> we did not have a clue as to if we were going to make it to the next town, if we were going to live, if we were going the die. but we knew that we had to leave. >> that railroad is now gone. ripped up. the jungle reclaiming the route. all that remains is this railway bridge which leslie remembers with dread. >> i recall a bridge -- i have a horrible fear of heights. horrible. and there was an area that we had to cross and i just had to get on my hands and knees and cross it.

i couldn't stand up. i just couldn't. >> look closely and you will understand her fears. you can see straight through the railroad ties to the river below. >> she was really scared. i was scared, too. >> robert paul joined up with leslie's group just before that bridge crossing. he had been a security guard for jim jones and believed in jones until he got to guyana. >> at first he was so good and then all that evil came down. i thought i'd met god. but i met satan. >> paul and another man also left that morning. the trek through the jungle was exhausting for everyone. >> it was hard. it was hard. we was really tired. >> how difficult was the walk carrying a child on your back? >> oh -- >> three other little kids. >> it was a tough walk. but then, too, it wasn't a -- it

was a freedom walk. it was a walk to freedom. >> a passing train stopped and gave leslie's group, now 11 people in all, a ride over the last several miles. when they came to the end of the line in the town of matthews ridge, suddenly they came face to face with more fear. >> walk up to the police station and then we have guns drawn on us. we don't know why. the captain proceeds to tell us there's been shootings in port kaituma. >> coming up, the last hours of congressman leo ryan and the reverend jim jones. ♪ everything you need to stretch out on long trips. residence inn.

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you could feel death in the air. you could actually feel it. >> jerry parks had a sense saturday, november 18th, 1978, would be his last day in jonestown, one way or another. >> i knew that we didn't have long. i knew that if we got out of there, it was going to have to be pretty quick. >> parks wanted his family to leave with the others who walked away that morning. >> i had clothes stashed in a plastic bag in the tall grass where i worked. >> but then he saw someone approaching it. >> i seen him pick up the bag and start walking. first thing i thought, oh, no,

someone has turned us in. >> so his 64-year-old mother, edith parks, sought out congressman ryan's aide jackie speier. tim carter seen here overheard the conversation. >> and edith parks walked up to jackie speier, and said, i'm being held prisoner here. i want to go home. >> this is jackie speier walking back with edith parks to talk to the rest of the family. in this nbc video from that day. tim carter will never forget what a jones loyalist said to him. >> and she goes, well, it looks like we're all going to die. >> speier tape-recorded a statement by the oldest daughter, brenda park. >> what is your wish today? >> to go back home. >> and where is home? >> the u.s. >> jackie speier walked off to find jim jones. the woman she passed is patricia

parks, jerry's wife, in the last hours of her life. speier confronted jones with the defectors. >> he became very agitated, very upset. tried to talk with him. he was sweating, beads of sweat on his face. >> jerry's youngest daughter tracy parks was confronted by jones' wife marceline. >> first off i thought this was the day i was going to die. >> but she left tracy a reopening to join her family. >> and she goes, you don't want to leave, do you? i said if you take me to them, i'll talk them out of it. >> jerry parks faced down jim jones. >> i said what the hell has he done for me besides hold my family prisoner here for 7 1/2 months. >> as jerry parks turned away -- >> i look over there. jones is sitting on the bench and he's just sitting there, a

dejected, beaten man. >> yet, another confrontation awaited jim jones when he sat down with nbc reporter don harris for an interview. >> last night, someone came and passed me this note. >> harris gave him vern gosney's note asking for help to go home. >> that's who we're talking about. he wants to leave his son here. if jonestown is so bad, why does he want to leave his son here? >> in fact, vern gosney had to agree to leave his young son mark behind before jones would let him go. >> all the decisions around my son, i -- well, you know, will haunt me for the rest of my life. >> jones raged at harris. >> people play games, friend. they lie. they lie. what can i do about liars? are you people going to leave us? i just beg you. please leave us. we will bother nobody. anybody that wants to get out of here, they can get out of here. we have no problem about getting out of here. they come and do it all the

time. i don't know what kind of game -- people like the publicity. some people do, i don't. >> the sky turned black, the wind came up and the wind came up strong and it was just torrential rain. >> when the rain came, the parks family and others took shelter in an open-air shed. in an open-air shed. that's little tracy parks on the right in the blue windbreaker. jim jones is there, too, talking with the bogue family who had been among jones' earliest followers and now wanted to leave, as well. >> that really -- that sent shock waves through me. >> jones moved over to talk to edith parks and her family. young tracy was distraught. >> i was crying and wiping my tears with the hat. the tears were not anything other than i was scared to death. i was really down deep in my

heart thinking, we're going to die. >> this is the last shot of the reverend jim jones that day as his grip on people was cracking. the rain stopped. the parks family walked toward a waiting truck. that's tracy again staying close to her older brother. as the group was leaving, another family was being torn apart. >> get back here. you bring those kids back here! you bring them back! >> one second. one second. >> don't you touch my kids. >> this mother resisted when others in her family wanted to go. in the end, the family would stay and all would die. >> emotions were starting to just become very tense. and i recognized that we were in a powder keg. >> this is vern gosney dragging his belongings toward the

departing truck. he tried to warn the congressman they were all in danger. >> he told me i had the congressional shield of protection over me and that i had nothing to worry about. i thought he was totally out of his mind. >> congressman leo ryan carrying the briefcase had planned to stay the night to help get more families out. then a church member came up behind him. >> and all of a sudden he puts a knife up to his throat and he says, all right, mf, you're going to die. we all jumped on him anyway. we all got the knife away. >> you can see blood spatters on ryan's shirt, from the attacker, not ryan. the ride to the small airport at port kaituma was slow, bumpy and tense. >> and you could just sense the fear in everyone. you could just feel it like it was bouncing off each other. >> when they reached the

airport, don harris asked a shaken ryan about the knife attack. >> yeah, he said, something about rob and choke and kill or knife -- i don't know. what he said was he intended to kill me. >> within minutes all three men here, congressman leo ryan, reporter don harris and the nbc cameraman behind the lens bob brown, seen earlier, the same day, would be dead. shot by jim jones' gunmen. just ahead -- ambush at the airport. >> i looked out the window and i said, they're killing everyone. they're killing everyone. [ male announcer ] if you've had a heart attack caused by a completely blocked artery, another heart attack could be lurking, waiting to strike. a heart attack that's caused by a clot, one that could be fatal. but plavix helps save lives. plavix, taken with other heart medicines, goes beyond what other heart medicines do alone, to provide greater protection against heart attack

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so i went back to my doctor again. we chose symbicort to help control my asthma symptoms all day and night. [ man ] symbicort improves my lung function, starting within 15 minutes. symbicort will not replace a rescue inhaler for sudden symptoms. it is a combination of two medicines and should not be taken more often than prescribed. symbicort contains formoterol. medicines like formoterol increase the risk of death from asthma problems, and children and adolescents may have an increased risk of being hospitalized for asthma problems. symbicort is not for people whose asthma is well controlled with a long-term asthma control medicine like inhaled corticosteroids. once your asthma is well controlled, your doctor will decide if you can stop symbicort without loss of control, and prescribe a long-term asthma control medicine. be sure to see your doctor if your asthma does not improve or gets worse. symbicort is a good choice to help control my asthma all day and night. [ inhales ] [ exhales ] ask your doctor if symbicort is a good choice for you. [ male announcer ] if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help.

the feelings are just like it happened yesterday. >> 30 years later tracy parks came back to this small airport near jonestown. did you feel like you were home free when you got to the airport? >> yeah, pretty much i thought, yeah, i'm going home. >> on that day, november 18th, 1978, 15 defectors got off the

truck at port kaituma airport. six in the parks family, seven with the bogue family, plus vern gosney and his friend. that's vern walking toward us. >> when i got there, we unloaded and i had a feeling of foreboding. >> this man, larry layton, was a faithful follower of jones. he worried congressional aide jackie speier. >> the only thing that was really bothering me was that all of a sudden larry layton had and decided he was a defector, he just had a gut instinct, just an intuition. >> jackie speier seen here, got people moving toward this plane, a 19-seat otter. that's jerry parks walking with his wife. tracy parks and her brother dale got on the smaller plane, so did larry layton and vern gosney.

>> the pilots started the plane and we were taxiing, and we were coming down the runway to take off and then the tractor trailer with the assassins cut in front of our plane. >> this is that tractor and farm wagon. >> and that's when i heard the shooting, and i looked out the window and i said, they're killing everyone. they're killing everyone. i turned and that's when larry shot me once in each side. >> larry layton, the false defector. at the same time, these gunmen leaped from that farm wagon as it pulled up near the larger plane. the nbc cameraman taking this footage was shot dead. >> i really didn't know what was happening at first. i didn't know what the sounds meant, and then when i realized that they were gunshots, i just -- i ran under the plane. >> leo ryan ducked behind a

wheel but was killed. the only u.s. congressman ever assassinated while in office. these are photos never seen publicly until now. lying behind ryan, the body of nbc reporter don harris. this newspaper photographer also was killed. jerry parks, 30 years ago. >> shot the reporters on the ground and the congressman. they come from the pickup -- the dump truck from the other side and got off and stuck the guns to their head point blank and blew their brains out. just shot them up terrible. >> the newsmen, the congressman and his aide jackie speier were clearly the target. >> and i was shot. five times. but the first thing i thought was, oh, my god, this is it. i'm 28 years old. and my life is over.

>> inside the larger plane, jerry parks was sitting across from his wife, patty, when bullets came through the windows. >> i heard my mom holler, my god, look at patty. and i turned around and looked and the whole top part of her head was gone. >> the tractor was over there. >> her daughter tracy. >> when they started shooting down here at the big plane, that's when larry layton started on our little plane. he shot the two people in front of us. then he turned around and pointed the gun at my brother's chest and the bullet we thought went off. he flew back and, you know, and acted like he had been hit and then looked down and realized he hadn't. >> dale and i struggled with larry to get the gun away. larry was hitting me and kicking me at that time, and i had to fight larry and i had to push up through the pilot's seat and go

out the pilot's door and then ran toward the jungle. >> a few steps into the jungle gosney collapsed. >> there was blood everywhere, and i thought, i'm dying. and then i blacked out. >> patricia parks' body was pulled from the larger plane. her daughter tracy back then. >> i didn't see her get shot but i saw her breathe in the plane and i saw her laying out on the ground. my mother was dead. they shot her, and my dad wanted to kind of not let me see that. >> worried the gunmen might return to the airport, jerry parks told his two daughters and three other youths to seek cover. >> we got them into the jungle and told them to stay there,

don't come out till we come back and holler for you. >> so where did you go? >> we just ran straight back through there, yeah. straight in. >> others carried a badly wounded jackie speier to the edge of the jungle. >> unfortunately, i was placed on an ant hill. but you don't sweat the small stuff when you're dying. >> reporters found the only painkiller in town. >> during the night, they would come and bring a bottle of rum and that's how i got through the night. sipping on a bottle of rum. >> jerry parks' worries were getting worse. >> before night came, we came back to the jungle. started hollering for the kids and no response. >> they never came. they said they did but we went so far we couldn't hear their voices. >> i thought, oh, my god, don't tell me they're lost.

>> next -- >> die with a degree of dignity. lay down your life with dignity. don't lay down with tears and agony. >> the end of jonestown. [ commentator ] lindsey vonn! she stays tough! earlier, she had an all-over achy cold... what's her advantage? it's speedy alka-seltzer! [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus rushes relief for all-over achy colds. the official cold medicine of the u.s. ski team. alka-seltzer plus. happening right now at red lobster. choose one of three premium seafood-and-steak combinations... all under $20. get succulent lobster... paired with our eight-ounce wood-grilled sirloin...

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darkness settles over

jonestown on its last day on earth. these are the final words in this unsigned suicide note. left behind amid the hundreds of bodies. tim carter saw the reverend jim jones teetering on the edge that day. >> you could see his jaws getting a little bit tighter, you know, and his arms being folded. >> after the truck left for the airport, carter turned to his wife. >> i said, i think we're all going to die. he's going to try to kill everybody. >> then an announcement over the loudspeaker. >> we walked up to the pavilion. it was very quiet. it was very somber. >> how very much i've loved you. how very much i've tried my best to give you a good life.

>> this from jim jones in the last tape-recording he ever made. >> if we can't live in peace then let's die in peace. >> he told his flock that this man, larry layton, planned to bring down congressman ryan's plane. >> they're going to shoot that pilot and down comes that plane into the jungle, and we had better not have any of our children left when it's over. >> he said the guyanese army would come through the jungle to torture them. >> when they start parachuting out of the air they'll shoot some of our innocent babies, and i don't think we should sit here and take any more time for our children to be endangered. >> this woman, christine miller, tried to argue with jim jones. >> i looked at all the babies, and i think they deserve to live. >> i agree but what more is

they deserve peace. >> jones' mistress maria called tim carter aside. >> she says, come here. i think i have something for to you do. she goes, we have three suitcases of money supposed to be delivered to the soviet embassy in georgetown. >> as carter prepared to leave, he saw the airport gunmen return. >> the tractor trailer that had come from the airstrip came up and stopped at the kitchen, and these guys jumped out and said, we got the congressman. >> jim jones told his 900 followers. >> the congressman is dead. please get us some medication. it's simple. it's simple. there's no convulsions with it. please, can we hasten with that medication? you don't know what you've done. >> at one point, carter saw the mistress maria whisper in jones' ear.

>> and he looked at her and said, is there any way to make it taste less bitter? so out loud she goes, no. it's not. and he said, is it supposed to be quick? and she said, yeah, it's supposed to be quick. >> please for god's sakes let's get on with it. we've lived as no other people have lived and loved. we've had as much of this world as we're going to get. let's be done with it. let's be done with the agony of it. >> when the children cried, a jones loyalist told parents -- >> it's just a little bitter tasting. they're not crying out of any pain. >> there are screams of agony. there are screams of terror. you can hear people crying. >> keep your emotions down. keep your emotions down. no, it will not hurt if you'll

be quiet. if you'll be quiet. >> 303 children would die in jonestown that day from toddlers to teens. >> leslie wilson's nephew and her niece. vern gosney's son mark. a third of all the dead were children murdered at jim jones' command wracked with convulsions, a painful death. >> i tell you, i don't care how many screams you hear, i don't care how many anguished cried, death is a million times more preferable than ten more days of this life. >> what i experienced and saw was absolute chaos and insanity. >> die with a degree of dignity. lay down your life with dignity. don't lay down with tears and

agony. >> tim carter walked back to the pavilion and saw his 1-year-old son malcolm in the arms of his wife gloria. >> here's sharon cobb, the pediatric nurse practitioner with a syringe in malcolm's mouth. gloria is standing there tears streaming down her face. just agony written all over her face. >> these syringes found later were filled with cyanide to kill the children. >> all they're doing is taking a drink to go to sleep. that's what death is, sleep. >> malcolm was dead. his little lips covered with foam which is what happens with arsenic and cyanide is it foams at the mouth. i put my arms around gloria as she was holding malcolm and just kept on sobbing. i love you so much. i love you so much.

i held gloria until she died. >> the vat, the vat. where is the vat with the green -- bring it here so the adults can begin. >> jones' last self-serving words as the tape ends. >> we didn't commit suicide. we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world. >> jim jones did not drink the cyanide. when almost everyone else was dead, jones was shot in the head. probably by a trusted aide. before the end came, these three men tim carter on the left, his brother on the right, pr man mike prokes in the middle, were allowed to walk away from jonestown with the suitcases holding $500,000 in cash. >> we dumped the first suitcase in the fields next to the

pavilion. >> they abandoned all three suitcases in the jungle. authorities later recovered them. when the men paused to rest, carter said, he put a gun to his head. >> i knew that i would never get the sounds and the smells and the sights of jonestown out of my mind ever again. >> the three men walked on that night to port kaituma where they were taken into custody. a day or so later, carter and prokes were put into a helicopter and flown back to jonestown to identify bodies. 909 people lay dead. many face down. often the children lying hidden beneath them.

>> as i walked through the pavilion, i identified what bodies i could. i saw injection marks in people's arms. i saw one in the back of somebody's head. i saw them on somebody's neck. it was really evident to people that people had been just flat out murdered. held down and injected the ones that didn't want to drink the poison. >> several bottles of cyanide still sat on a table in the sunlight. this vat with the deadly kool-aid-type punch rested on a walkway. a parrot stood watch over the dead. in the suicide hall, this sign "those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" hung above the body of jim jones. >> i did notice jones' body on the stage with the bullet hole in the side of his head, and i remember thinking, the son of a bitch didn't even die the way

everybody else died. >> jones' body would be among the first to be identified through fingerprints taken when l.a. vice cops arrested him for lewd conduct in the men's room of a movie theater, an arrest he fought to hush up. the airport gunmen in the farm wagon would all die in the mass suicide. among them, leslie wilson's husband joe. larry layton, the lone shooter to survive, would not be paroled from a u.s. prison until 2002. tim carter and his companion spent a few days in a guyana police cell, then were released. four others in jonestown lived through the suicide night. two men were able to sneak away during the slaughter. one of them, odell rhodes. >> he was telling people it

wasn't painful and that, you know, people had to die with dignity. >> this 76-year-old woman asleep in the infirmary was overlooked. so was one elderly man. only 33 left alive out of almost a thousand faithful followers in jonestown that day. the rest came home in metal coffins as ostracized in death as they had been isolated in life. many of the children could not be identified. other victims went unclaimed. the unwanted, the unnamed were buried on a hillside more than 400 in a mass grave here in oakland, california. >> i don't think society cared because they were nameless. they were nameless faces.

>> leslie wilson's mother, her niece and nephew are here. on a recent summer day she stood and offered an epitaph for the reverend jim jones. >> i would say jim jones was a psychopathic, hypocritical, egotistical maniac who wanted to go down in history. unfortunately, he felt the need to take everyone else with him. >> when we come back, the lost children of the jungle. >> i pretty much thought i was going to die in there. we were hungry. we were thirsty. we had fevers. >> "escape from jonestown" continues. nobody in my family ever had a heart attack.

if anything, i thought i'd get hit by a bus, but not a heart. my doctor put me on an aspirin regimen to help protect my life. [ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. check with your doctor because it can happen to anybody. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] at&t covers 97% of all americans. rethink possible.

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i'm don lemon live in the cnn headquarters in atlanta.

the pope hassocked the use of condoms in certain cases to stop aids. this is seen as a shift away from the church's ban on contraception. he says the use of condoms is okay when the sole intention is to reduce infection. the vatican published excerpts from his book "light of the world" ahead of its release on tuesday. with thanksgiving travel getting under way, president barack obama weighed in on the protest against patdowns at airports. he said while he understands, the security measures are necessary. he says the tsa has been under pressure to tighten security after the attempted underwear bombing on christmas day last year. right now, these measures are the most effective. a published report says north korea has built a nuclear plant, raising new fears the north will try to build more nuclear weapons. "the new york times" says north korea allowed an american

scientist to see the plant in american. an administration official says if true, the plan is another provocative act of defiance by the north. i'm don lemon keeping you informed. cnn, the most trusted name in news. the jungle grows right up to the edge of the airstrip at port kaituma. so where did you go? which way did you go? >> we just ran straight back through there. >> with her mother dead beside the runway, a congressman and three others killed, 12-year-old tracy parks ran for safety in the jungle. >> we ran too far and, of course, it's so thick that, like, once you get so far, you can't -- you get lost and in your direction. >> she was the youngest of five who fled. her 18-year-old sister and a boyfriend, a brother and sister in another family.

>> we just kept running and running and running. >> they feared the gunmen would be back. you thought they were going to come kill you? >> i just knew they were going to get us. i figured, well, they knew they didn't get everybody and they knew we were in there so we went in there, we wasn't even about to try to come back here. >> even if they could have found their way. >> it was so dark, so pitch black that you couldn't see two feet in front of you in there in the jungle at night. >> the five of them climbed into a half-fallen tree to spend the night. >> we heard shootings that first night but really it was the gunshots over in jonestown we were hearing, but -- so i -- we really didn't think we had anything to go back to. or, you know, any parents or anything. so we thought they finished off the rest of them. >> they thought everyone else had been killed.

they were too scared to come out of hiding. >> the helicopters were actually flying over. we could hear them and at nighttime they were shining a light down but we were hiding under banana leaves and whatever we could because we thought it was jim jones. i pretty much thought i was going to die in there because, you know -- >> in the jungle? >> yeah. i just -- we were hungry. we were thirsty. we had fevers. it was, you know, pretty -- all of us were sick. pretty sure it was the second night we all had a little hole that was like a water hole. >> they sensed an animal nearby. >> and my sister said, tracy, be quiet. she whispered it to me. be quiet. don't even breathe. >> to this day they don't know what it was.

by the next morning the youngsters wanted to be found. >> we'd see a light off to the distance, and we'd get to running toward it and it would be a big hole up in the top where the sun was coming down through the trees. >> the group came to this river and started across. >> i almost drowned. we had our clothes on and boots and everything else, plus we were weak from no food and no water and no sleep. >> tracy sank. her sister's boyfriend reached for her. >> he looked back and i was -- i had went under already and swallowed a bunch of the yucky water and then he looked back and just kind of slowed down and grabbed me by the jacket and just pulled me over to the side. >> saved you? >> saved me. >> the river was close to the airport. they stumbled up to the military guards there who sent for tracy's older brother. >> he come running up.

i'll never forget the look on his face. it was like he had seen a ghost. >> tracy was taken to a small store nearby. >> i just laid there, and i thought, i've already been through hell. what else could happen really doesn't matter. >> she was flown back to the guyanese capital to a reunion with her father at the police station. >> i knew when i saw him i'm going home. i'm going to be able to go home. and that was the first time i had ever really felt that since the day i had hit the gates to go in. >> ahead, 30 years of unending pain. >> whoever said time heals all wounds didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

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i'd get this tightness in my chest. so i went back to my doctor again. we chose symbicort to help control my asthma symptoms all day and night. [ man ] symbicort improves my lung function, starting within 15 minutes. symbicort will not replace a rescue inhaler for sudden symptoms. it is a combination of two medicines and should not be taken more often than prescribed. symbicort contains formoterol. medicines like formoterol increase the risk of death from asthma problems, and children and adolescents may have an increased risk of being hospitalized for asthma problems. symbicort is not for people whose asthma is well controlled with a long-term asthma control medicine like inhaled corticosteroids. once your asthma is well controlled, your doctor will decide if you can stop symbicort without loss of control, and prescribe a long-term asthma control medicine. be sure to see your doctor if your asthma does not improve or gets worse. symbicort is a good choice

to help control my asthma all day and night. [ inhales ] [ exhales ] ask your doctor if symbicort is a good choice for you. [ male announcer ] if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. in a way, this is the youngest survivor of jonestown, chad rhodes. just 19 when he was charged with murder and sent to prison for life without parole. his mother, pregnant with him survived the airport ambush the day jonestown died. on a winter night in oakland, california, in 1999, rhodes opened up with an assault rifle from an overpass and killed a policeman on the highway below. >> we heard a gunshot like boom, boom, boom, boom, more like four or five gunshots, yes, and then we heard a car took off from that area.

>> trouble has been a fellow traveler for many through the years since jonestown. mike prokes, the pr man who helped walk away with the suitcases of cash, called a news conference early in 1979. >> i refused to let my brothers and sisters and the others in jonestown die in vain. >> he got up, walked into the bathroom and shot himself to death. these two former church members outspoken critics of jones were shot to death in their home a year later in what police think was a family dispute. in 1984, in los angeles, one child was killed and 11 others wounded when a sniper, a young man whose parents died at jonestown, sprayed this schoolyard with gunfire. when police closed in, he shot himself to death.

for survivors who lived through that last day in jonestown, ghosts return in different ways. for tim carter, it's a smell. >> i can't smell almonds to this day. it will make me physically nauseous because cyanide smells like almonds and that's what it smelled like there that day was almond. >> for tracy parks it can be behind the wheel of her pickup truck. >> i still have fears of being shot driving down the street. i always feel like someone is going to shoot me. yeah, it scars you. >> for vern gosney, it could be walking down the street. >> i could see a man with light skin and black hair from behind and in my mind i thought jim jones was alive. >> the airport shooting left gosney in a hospital for months. >> i was shot through the stomach. i was shot through the liver. my diaphragm was torn. my stomach had a -- was torn. had a collapsed lung.

my spleen ended up -- having to remove my spleen. >> at first he turned to painkillers. >> i was on anti-depressants. i was on tranquilizers. i was on sedatives. >> then worst. >> and i started drinking and i started using elicit drugs, as well. >> he had gone back to work in a san francisco law office. >> when i look back on it now i don't even see how i walked around much less worked a full-time job. it was so painful for me to be conscious i just really -- i drank myself to unconsciousness every day. >> in 1982, gosney moved to the island of maui in hawaii with another commune that collapsed. when he lost one job, he applied for another with the maui police department. >> i didn't tell them that i was a chronic alcoholic. i didn't tell them that i was a jonestown survivor.

i didn't tell them that i was hiv positive. i didn't tell them that i had a drug history. >> after a couple of years as a cop, he hit rock bottom. finally, he stopped drinking, stopped using drugs and kept his job. >> i've been clean and sober for 19 years now, over 19 years. >> life has not been easy. >> i lost two partners, two beautiful men that i loved and were partnered with that i lost to aids. >> the license on gosney's truck says it all. >> a license plate "alive" is a celebration of me being alive and surviving jonestown, surviving everything that's happened in my life. >> survival for leslie wilson has been a 30-year battle. >> the guilt of living was insurmountable.

i did not want to live. i literally did not want to live. i did not want to be here. >> five members of her family died the day she walked away. >> they know that i think i knew what was going to happen, that i just left them there to die. >> you left your brother behind. >> my brother. >> how old was he? >> he was 16. and it doesn't help when your father says, how come you didn't get your brother out? >> what did you say to that? >> i was going to come back for him. it wasn't supposed to end like that. >> survivor guilt can be a poison in itself. you tried to kill yourself basically. >> oh, for sure. i was very, very self-destructive. >> what did you do? >> drugs the first. >> what kind? >> cocaine. cocaine. in the '80s. started snorting it by a party drug. >> by five years later? >> smoked out pretty much. >> in sacramento, california, in

the mid-'80s leslie was arrested trying to cash a stolen check. >> actually saved my life. >> getting caught? >> yes. >> getting sent to prison? >> yes. >> how much time did you serve? >> only did five months. >> but it was enough time to clean you up? >> oh, for sure, for sure. >> even as she straightened out her life, for years leslie wilson would not tell others she was a jonestown survivor. >> so i just lived underground. i just dug deep and i lied and i changed my name and i pretended to be this person that i wasn't because i could never talk about my family. people would talk about their high school reunions and most of my friends were dead. >> today leslie wilson is a grandmother, works with medical insurance claims and has written a book about life and jonestown. >> but i want people to understand that we weren't just names and not -- that we were human. and that we came back. it was not easy. it was not easy at all.

>> congressional aide jackie speier came back on a stretcher. >> i was hospitalized for two months. i must have had over ten surgeries. >> for a time she thought she had lost use of her right arm. >> how are you? >> i'm jackie speier and i'm running for congress. how are you? >> very good. >> she ran for her murdered congressman's seat but lost in a hard-fought primary and then turned to county politics and served almost two decades in the california legislature. early in 2008, the leo ryan seat opened up again. this time jackie speier won in a runaway race. >> so help you god? >> i do. >> congratulations. you are now a member. >> and was sworn in after 30 years as a freshman congresswoman. for almost everyone who did survive, escape from jonestown was not a single day's journey.

it has taken decades. >> it never goes away. >> tracy parks tried to hide in a bottle. >> i just drank because that's how i hid my pain as a teenager. >> but nothing could chase away the feelings of chronic fatigue, constant stress and memories that came back at night. >> all the nightmares are i end up back there. i'm trying to get out. i'm trying to run through the jungle, and i know that i might not make it through the jungle. and i'd get up and literally have a panic attack. have to open the doors and walk outside and get air. >> for jerry parks, it may be a little easier each year. but no one is home free, even at the age of 75. >> i found in myself in my case that i break down real easy. i can cry real easy over the slightest little thing. whoever said time heals all wounds didn't know what the hell he was talking about. it doesn't.

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in the mid '90s in atlanta, a fire left leslie wilson

homeless. she called a hot line and was sent to this shelter with her 11-year-old daughter. >> i'll never forget. i was at church and my daughter walked in and she started crying. she goes, mommy. and i thought -- >> with moments like that, what remains remarkable is this -- in the years which have followed the horror that was jonestown, leslie wilson and other survivors have kept their faith, despite jim jones' betrayal of his god and theirs. how come you're still a religious person? >> i'm not religious. i'm spiritual. >> what's the difference? >> i don't believe in organized religion. >> because of jonestown? >> oh, a lot of people think it has a lot to do with it. a friend of mine asks me, how come you have so much faith and you don't go to church? i tell them, it's not an easy journey to get here.

>> tracy parks and her father have made the same journey. >> i do not follow anybody religionwise or anything. i believe in god on my own. >> i believe in god. i believe in christ. but i don't believe you have to attend a church to make it into the next world. >> vern stands apart, literally. his body from neck to feet is tattooed with eastern religious symbols. >> they're gods and goddesses, mostly hindu. i would say i'm a pagan, a wiccan, buddhist. >> rather than renounce religion, he has opened himself to much of everything. >> it's a very important part of my life. meditation, prayer to whatever spark animates life.

and i don't know what that is. >> tracy parks' prayer was to come back to guyana, to the airport where her mother died to say farewell. >> i didn't think it would bother me like this. >> 30 years ago, tracy and her family had been unable to leave guyana in time for her mother's funeral back in the u.s. she brought flowers for a makeshift memorial next to the air strip. >> this is harder than i thought. >> of course. >> the words say simply "mom." she left four red roses, a picture of her mother, patricia parks, and a small wooden cross. then stood and said a silent prayer on the spot where her mother was shot to death along with congressman leo ryan and

three newsmen. why did you want to come back? >> for this. >> to make a real memorial? >> yes. i just wanted to say good-bye. >> then one last leg of the journey. six miles over a bumpy road back to jonestown. one thing was the same as the day she arrived 30 years ago. >> first thing i noticed was the heat was unbearable. >> everything else was different. an open field at what was the heart of the settlement. the buildings dismantled and carried away by natives. jungle growth retaking the land, so thick our guides needed machetes.

a few banana trees still standing. and this, the remains of one small tractor, half hidden in the weeds. for tracy parks, what is important is what was not here. >> this is where it happened. so i had to bring myself back to feel the pain and the fears and see that it's gone really helped me. >> did you not believe it was gone? >> i had to see it for myself. >> that it was really gone? >> yeah. >> that no buildings stand? >> yeah. >> that he's not here. >> that he's not here. >> when one of the earliest members of the people's temple arrived here in guyana, he said jim jones told him the road to jonestown led in, but it did not lead out. for 900 people who followed jim jones here, he led them only to the grave. the sign in the rafters in the suicidho