The unclaimed, cremated remains of nine victims of a 1978 mass cult suicide-murder in Jonestown, Guyana, have turned up in a closed funeral home in Delaware, USA.
Officials with the state Division of Forensic Science are working to identify all remains and to notify relatives after they were discovered last week.
The remains were discovered at the abandoned Minus Funeral Home in Dover, Delaware by the building’s new owner who called in authorities.
The building is owned by a bank.
The division last week responded to a request to check the former funeral home after 38 containers of remains were discovered inside.
A Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security spokeswoman told Mail Online that they had identified the remains as Jonestown cult members by cross-checking paperwork that was found with the remains with other official records.
Dover Police officers identified other areas of interest on the property, according to an official release. These were areas of loosely compacted soil.
The excavation was conducted to determine if additional remains were on the property.
Dead bodies littered the ground in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978 after a mass suicide of People's Temple cult followers, led by Jim Jones (Bettmann/CORBIS photo)
Dead bodies littered the ground in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978 after a mass suicide of People’s Temple cult followers, led by Jim Jones (Bettmann/CORBIS photo)
During the excavation, an arrowhead, two animal bones, oyster shells and charcoals were found.
Several bronze gravesite markers for deceased veterans who served in World War I through the Vietnam War were also found in the former funeral home.
These markers will be presented to family members if they can be located or returned to the Veterans Administration.
Thirty-three containers were marked and identified. They spanned a period from about 1970 to the 1990s and included the Jonestown remains.
It is unclear how the Jonestown remains ended up being left behind at the Minus Funeral Home but a spokeswoman said there was nothing improper about how the remains had been stored and they were simply unclaimed.
Bodies of the 911 Jonestown massacre victims were brought to Dover Air Force Base, home to the US military’s largest mortuary.
The Jonestown cult members' remains were found inside this empty funeral home by the new owner last week who called in authorities (Google photo)
The Jonestown cult members’ remains were found inside this empty funeral home by the new owner last week who called in authorities (Google photo)
More than 900 adults and children died after drinking cyanide-laced punch on November 18, 1978 at Jonestown, Guyana. Among the dead were more than 270 children.
Dead bodies of cult followers littered the ground outside the People’s Temple, led by Jim Jones.
It was the single largest loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act before September 11.
Jones headed a religious movement called the People’s Temple Agricultural Project from the early 1960s in the US before leading a mass migration to Guyana, a former British colony, in the mid-1970s to establish a utopian community.
However, the paradise that Jones had promised quickly turned sour as hard labour and hours of lectures and classes on socialism were enforced. Jones’s readings which viewed America as a capitalist monster were broadcast day and night from the commune’s towers.
The land agreed upon for Jonestown with the People’s National Congress Government had poor soil leading to low food supplies and sickness.
Members who acted out of line were kept in a six by four box and children were forced to spend the night at the bottom of a well. Those who tried to escape were drugged and armed guards patrolled the grounds.
In 1977, Jonestown defectors and concerned relatives begin petitioning the US Government to investigation the goings-on in Guyana. They made public details of abuse and alleged crimes taking place in Jonestown.
In 1978, Jim Jones’s physical health was deteriorating rapidly through sickness and years of drug abuse. In turn, he was becoming deranged and deeply paranoid over conspiracy theories and the number of people he believed were out to get him from the CIA to the US Post Office.
The same year, a delegation went to visit Jonestown, led by Congressman Leo Ryan. After visiting the compound with staff and journalists, he left with a number of defectors.
Ryan along with four others were killed after being shot by members of the People’s Temple, who ambushed them on the Port Kaituma airstrip.
Soon afterwards, Jones gathered a meeting of all members while his assistants prepared a vat of Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide and other drugs.
The Temple had stored pounds of cyanide for months after Jones had got a jeweller’s licence which reportedly said he was using the deadly chemical to clean gold.
As Temple members lined up to take the poison, it began to take effect within minutes. It is unclear whether many thought it was a dress-rehearsal as had happened in the past on so-called ‘White Nights’.
Jones died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Only five people who were intended to be poisoned survived either by hiding, pretending to be dead or escaping into the jungle.
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