'If I ever get out alive'
How Jonestown horror inspired Calif. pol to serve
On Nov. 14, 1978, Jackie Speier, a 28year-old legislative assistant to California Congressman Leo Ryan, flew with her boss to investigate the Jonestown commune in Guyana.
Four days later, she lay sprawled on a runway, five bullets in her, the congressman dead nearby.
Speier has detailed her harrowing tale in a new memoir, “Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back,” published by Little A.
After hearing tales of abuse from constituents whose relatives were in the South American nation with cult leader Jim Jones, Ryan agreed to fly there to see if the stories were true, and Speier — a Democrat who was elected to the House herself in 2008 in what is now California’s 14th district and was again re-elected last week — was part of his entourage.
Speier brought letters from concerned relatives to some of the Jonestown inhabitants, but few were interested in reading them.
“It was strange — I felt like I was speaking to people who had had something removed in them, like they had severed all emotional attachment to their parents and families and even identities back home,” Speier writes.
Later on, Jonestown members put on a show for guests as “Jones sat on his de facto throne . . . beneath a black sign that read, mysteriously, ‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ ”
That night, members approached NBC news correspondent Don Harris with notes reading, “Please help us get out of Jonestown.”
The next morning, Speier told those people to pack their things. Soon, Ryan and Speier were besieged by over 60 people hoping to leave.
As it became clear what was happening, Jones’ mood turned.
“When cameras were rolling, [Jones] spoke of how he loved [his followers] and how there would always be a place for them — but those declarations would be followed by thinly veiled mutters about treason and liars,” Speier writes. “He was visibly cracking.”
Speier piled almost two dozen defectors onto a dump truck to take them to an airstrip. Soon after, they heard a commotion. She turned to see “Congressman Ryan emerge from a throng of people with a torn and bloodied shirt. While trying to keep the peace, he had been attacked by a member with a knife.”
Ryan was brought aboard the truck, and they made their way to the strip.
Speier was helping people board a plane when “a large red tractortrailer rumbled onto the airstrip.
“About a dozen men leapt from the tractor, leveled their automatic weapons,” she writes. “Screams of shock and anguish filled the air, underscored by the rapid pounding of gunfire. I dove to the ground behind the wheel of one of the airplanes and waited, as the onslaught of bullets thumped against the metal above me.
“I was lying on my side with my head down, feigning dead, when my body was suddenly crushed by a shocking blow to my side. It felt like a Mack truck had just sped over me.”
Speier took five bullets, fired at point blank range, in her right arm, leg and back. “Indescribable pain ripped through my body,” she said.
Speier looked around and saw bodies, including Ryan’s. NBC’s Harris had also been murdered.
The survivors waited hours for help, but none came. While waiting, word spread that Jones and his more than 900 followers had drunk poison and were all dead.
Twenty-two hours passed before Speier was carried aboard a Guyanese cargo plane by local army personnel and flown home. While she had waited, Speier had a revelation.
“I vowed that if I got out of there alive, I would make every day count, I would live as fully as possible, and I would devote my life to public service.”