Page 106 - Terrorism: The Ritual of the Devil

104

The People's Temple, founded under the
leadership of Jim Jones in the 1970s, has
gone down in history as the cult responsible
for the worst mass suicide ever. More than
900 people, including
children, killed them-
selves by ingesting poi-
son.

that incident, the leader of the cult ordered their members to commit
mass suicide by drinking potassium cyanide. Children died first; ba-
bies were killed by poison squirted into their mouths with a syringe.
Then more than 900 people, children included, poisoned themselves. 43
By the 1990s, however, the group that attracted the most attention

through mass death was the cult of David Koresh. When security units
wished to inspect a farm in Texas on February 28, 1993, cult members
opened fire on them. A siege that would last 51 days then ensued.