Who or how was mass suicide preacher Jim Jones funded?- more than 900 people to feed /house/medicines etc- was it members themselves?-unlikely that 70% were impoverished blacks.He must have had some mega buck donations / millionaire members
Huge amounts of land to be purchased, huge transport logistics - given that he moved to several locations- which must have been expensive.And how could he suddenly charter planes for 900 members- who payed the airline bill?- and how come he already had Jonestown as next day location after his tax scandal?
Also what happened to his armed guards- did they die aswell?

every body gave Jones 25% of all income including giving up their homes and property.
I have no idea what happened to his guards, I hate to think that some are out there living
a good life unpunished for their crimes.

there are conspircie theorys that he was funded by the CIA, an the whole Jonestown was a experement.

Was it only 25%? I thought it was much more. I guess after they got to Jonestown they were all working 20 hour days in return for room and board.
Transporting members to Jonestown was a long drawn-out process, over a year, possibly more as I remember. They used to send videotapes back to the US of members in Jonestown saying how good it was and urging members in the US to go there as soon as possible.

As far as I remember, Jim Jones felt persecuted in the US for years and it was finally a high profile newspaper piece that caused him to leave. But it had been planned for a long time.

(PBS has a great in-depth documentary on this that you can get on DVD).

Even the most "impoverished" members of Jim Jones' cult received welfare and social security checks and Jones demanded and received at least twenty-five percent of those. You multiply a minimum of a hundred bucks a month X thousands of members X month after month and then see how much property you can buy with that loot. Especially on credit.

Meanwhile Jones was also wheedling every possible dime he could out of the City of San Francisco for all the "civic betterment" (!) projects he himself had devised.

Jim Jones had no need for multi-millionaire backers. He himself WAS that multi-millionaire!

In 1972 Jim Jones was appointed City Commisioner in San Fransisco where he made grants to local newspapers.He also started "a charity effort" to recruit the poor.In addition,followers belonging to his followers were surrendered to communal care,the parents of these children were receiving $65,000:00 a month in total which was appropriated by Jones and added to his own wealth (which was estimated at $26 million.(Which you can gaurantee was acheived through legitimate means)

It was my understanding that Jone's followers would pretty much turn over most if not all of their earnings to him.

Yes, members were "encouraged" to give all that they could to the Church. And while in Jonestown they did sell things to the outside, I believe, and had members still in the US send in cash.

Few other questions
How long did the massacre take?
Were any members shot for refusing poison?
Is the CIA theory credible?
Did he have major backers-or was it just individuals?

From what I've heard and read it didn't take very long, but don't know what it actually was time wise and yes, many of them did not want to take the poison and either had it forcibly administered or were shot. As far as the CIA being involved there are rumors, but nothing that can be substantiated. Most of what I've heard about this is that the CIA was interested in observing Jone's mind control methods. As far as major backers I think they may have had some support from the Guyanese government.

A good book on the subject is Seductive Poison by Deborah Layton who was one of Jim Jone's chief officials until she decided to leave and escape from Jonestown. This she did only a few months before the massacre.

He was funded by like minded well meaning fundamentalists like himself i assume.

Just long enough for several hundred members to drink poison-laced beverages.



A few apparently were but even more had the poison poured down their throats. Still others fled into the nearby jungle and hid. This included conspiracy and JFK assassination author Mark Lane who was visiting the compound at the time.



Personally I don't think so. If the CIA spent all the time they are supposed to staging flying saucer hoaxes and infiltrating weird cults they'd never have time for anything else.



I think it's been fairly well-established in earlier posts that Jones was independently wealthy due to the money he'd raked in from his followers. Also the City of San Francisco stood ready to hand him additional funds when he requested them.

Jim Jones frequently informed his followers that he was God. When exactly did that become a fundamentalist doctrine? I must have been out in the other room.

Jones also seems to have tortured and raped both female and male congregants, some of them very young. That doesn't square with my idea of "well-meaning."

I'm sorry, but please explain why Jim Jones needed millionaire contributors when he himself was receiving one-quarter of the monthly welfare and Social Security checks of 3,000 church members? On top of that Jones was one of the main recipients of CITY funds.

Jones is estimated to have been worth $26,000,000.00. Doesn't that make HIM a millionaire?

First in their own they probably thought they were well meaning and though Jim was well meaning. If they did not then they would not have handed over all their money to him.