HOW I ESCAPED THE JONESTOWN MASSACRE!
I CARRIED MY BABY TO SAFETY BUT THE REST OF MY FAMILY DIED IN MASS KOOL-AID SUICIDE
INSPIRING stories of bravery emerged from the devastation in Jonestown, Guyana, where 918 Americans died in a mass suicide ordered by psycho cult leader Jim Jones!
As the Peoples Temple honcho and his gun-toting thugs forced followers to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid and die in horrible agony, Leslie Wagner-Wilson snatched up her three-year-old son and ran for their lives!
Now, 40 years after the
Nov. 18, 1978, murders at a remote South American jungle base, the 61-year-old still has nightmares, recounted in her book, “Slavery of Faith.”
Leslie, then the 20-year-old bride of Jonestown security chief Joe Wilson, strapped her toddler, Jakari, to her back and fled with nine others.
They had overheard guards talking about giving children poisoned punch and receiving orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape!
The group stole away and came across a train. But they refused to board because it was headed back toward Jonestown!
They slogged on five more hours and reached a trestle bridge high above a river.
“One of the men took Jakari, and I crawled across. I was scared I would fall off!” By nightfall, they’d covered more than 30 miles. That’s when they heard another train approaching from the direction of Jonestown.
The conductor “asked if we wanted a ride,” she writes. “The men said yes, so we climbed on board.”
At the tiny town of Matthew’s Ridge, the group was led to the police station, where “there were guns drawn on us!”
The crew’s knives and machetes were confiscated as they explained to a captain they’d escaped from Jonestown.
That’s when they heard the tragic fate of California Congressman Leo Ryan, who was fatally shot along with four others after coming to investigate conditions at the cult’s compound. Ryan’s aide Jackie Speier was wounded but survived, and is now a Democratic congresswoman. Leslie learned her husband, several relatives and friends were among the 642 who perished before perverted preacher Jones, 49, blew his brains out.
The wacko had proclaimed the mass murder a “revolutionary suicide” to show support for “socialism.” But today, Leslie calls Jones a sex fiend and the face of evil. “He was all about power and would sacrifice anyone — or anything — to get it!”