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Chapter Twenty: Put the Cup Down — The Altar Call and the Benediction

These are the sources the Kool-Aid Laboratory used to examine this chapter. Every one is public. Check them yourself.

Want the plain-English verdict and the full laboratory report for this chapter? Those are in Who's Drinking the Kool-Aid? — The Official Research Companion. Get the Companion →

#1 Primary record

U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs — The Assassination of Representative Leo J. Ryan and the Jonestown, Guyana Tragedy (Staff Investigative Group report, 1979)

; FBI Peoples Temple/Jonestown records and recordings; U.S. State Department and Government of Guyana recovery, identification, and death records.

#2 Background

Death total and breakdown:

918 total — 909 at Jonestown; 5 murdered at the Port Kaituma airstrip (Rep. Leo J. Ryan; NBC's Don Harris and Bob Brown; photographer Greg Robinson; Temple defector Patricia "Patty" Parks); 4 at the Peoples Temple house in Lamaha Gardens, Georgetown (Sharon Amos and her three children Liane, Christa, Martin).

#3 Primary record

Jonestown survivor testimony and Peoples Temple audio recordings

documenting coercion, isolation, information control, and the final events.

#4 Primary record

Research on coercive control, conformity, obedience, group pressure, identity formation, and escalation of commitment

— supporting the general behavioral warning without equating present political life with Jonestown.

#5 Primary record

The completed manuscript and the book's certified chapter records

— confirming the recap of subjects and mechanisms and the recurring one-standard method (red-cup/blue-cup, reversed-party test, local civic participation, protection of the vulnerable).