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Do You Really Want to Know? One Man’s Search for Family From Jonestown and Beyond

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The Jonestown memorial at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland. (J.P. Dobrin/KQED)

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Forty-one years ago this week, more than 900 people died in a mass suicide in Jonestown, a remote settlement in South America.

They were members of the Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, a charismatic white minister who preached racial equality through a kind of socialism. The Peoples Temple was headquartered in San Francisco, but when Jones came under scrutiny, he brought his followers to the jungles of Guyana, to build a perfect multi-racial utopia.

Jones became increasingly paranoid and unhinged. On November 18, 1978, some of his followers ambushed and killed California Congressman Leo Ryan, who was in Guyana investigating the Temple.

Four others were gunned town, including three members of the media. Ryan's aid Jackie Speier, who went on to take his seat in congress, was shot five times.

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That day, Jones orchestrated what he called an act of "revolutionary suicide," ordering his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch. Some families were wiped out altogether.

We reprise Tara Siler's documentary from last year, about a Bay Area man who unravels the tangled family history that binds him to that tragedy.

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