James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American religious cult leader who initiated and was responsible for a mass suicide and mass murder in Jonestown, Guyana. Jones achieved notoriety as the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple cult.\n', '

Jones started the Peoples Temple in Indiana during the 1950s. He was officially ordained in 1956 by the Independent Assemblies of God and in 1964 by the Disciples of Christ. He moved the Temple to California in 1965 and gained notoriety with its activities in San Francisco in the early 1970s. He then relocated to Guyana.\n', 'In 1978, media reports surfaced that human rights abuses were taking place in the Peoples Temple in Jonestown. United States Congressman Leo Ryan led a delegation into the commune to investigate what was going on; Ryan and others were murdered by gunfire while boarding a return flight with defectors. Jones subsequently committed a mass murder-suicide of 918 of his followers, 304 of whom were children, almost all by cyanide poisoning via Flavor Aid.\n', '

Jones was born on May 13, 1931, in a rural area of Crete, Indiana to James Thurman Jones (1887–1951), a World War I veteran, and Lynetta Putnam (1902–1977). Jones was of Irish and Welsh descent; he later claimed partial Cherokee ancestry through his mother, but his maternal second cousin later stated this was untrue.[note 1] Economic difficulties during the Great Depression led to the Jones family moving to the town of Lynn in 1934, where Jones grew up in a shack without plumbing.\n', '

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