Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple

Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple

Deborah Layton was, by her own account, a typical rebellious youth, with nothing in her dossier to indicate that she would eventually find herself in Jim Jones's People's Temple in Guyana, looking for a way out of the green hell that had become the People's Temple Agricultural Project. She barely escaped in June 1978. Within months, more than 900 people drank Jones's cyanide punch and committed "revolutionary suicide" in the face of mounting stateside pressure on the cult, some of it prompted by Layton's own testimonials upon her safe return home. Her brother, Larry, also survived, and as one of the few left alive in Guyana became a scapegoat for Jones's crimes; he is now serving a life sentence in federal prison. I've always wondered how people can succumb to the seductive powers of someone else and seeing how Jim Jones played with everyone is truly unreal.