David Hume Kennerly

Story and Photographs by David Hume Kennerly

Neff and I immediately decided to head down there. Having an American Express card proved valuable, we charted a jet, put the charge on my card, and off we went to Georgetown, Guyana, a place 2,000 miles away in South America.  

When Neff and I arrived in Georgetown late Sunday, I ran into my good friend and fellow photographer Frank Johnston of the Washington Post.  He had linked up with Charles Krause of the Post who had been shot along with Ryan and the others,  but survived.  Krause was still reporting the story, he is definitely my kind of journalist! Frank briefed me on what he knew about what had unfolded, and told me some of the names of reporters who had been killed. I knew two of them, Don Harris of NBC whom I had known from when he covered President Ford a few years earlier, and Greg Robinson, a photographer for the San Francisco Examiner.

The following morning at a Guyanese government press conference, they announced that there had been some mass suicides, but due to poor communications it was not clear exactly what had happened.  There was even talk that there might be some Jonestown militants who would fight the government and were holding out in the area. The officials said a small press pool would be taken into up there, and rightly chose Johnston and Krause to make the trip.  

Neff and I, however, were determined to get there on our own, which proved to be a saga in its own right.

A national emergency had been declared and no unauthorized planes would be allowed to fly into the Jonestown area.  The networks all had out-of-country aircraft standing by, but the government said that no non-Guyanese pilots or planes would be allowed anywhere near the place.  Neff and I switched into high gear to try and find a pilot and an aircraft and pilot that would pass muster with the Guyanese.  And we found them. The only ones in all of Guyana, in fact, that met their requirements. 

Now we needed permission to take off and land at Port Kaituma, the nearest runway to Jonestown, the place where Leo Ryan was assassinated, and where the journalists were also killed.  We needed the information minister to green light it with the director of aviation, and after several hours of spirited conversation she agreed, except for one slight problem, she didn’t sign a letter to that effect. The aviation director was a real stickler for protocol and wanted the piece of paper. We pleaded our case with an extremely efficient secretary to the minister who signed it for us, and it worked. When we found out that we would be getting the flight we invited NBC’s Fred Francis and a cameraman along who had been unable to get their own ride. It was the least we could do for them after their colleagues were killed.

The small Cessna we rented had a few issues that we noticed when we got in it. There were bullet holes in its side and seats. Also some dried blood splattered around. The pilot told us that the damage was caused by Larry Layton, a close follower of Jim Jones, who tried to kill the passengers and him in the plane who were Jonestown defectors. One of the passengers disarmed Layton before he killed them all. This happened in Port Kaituma at the same time as the other shootings of Ryan and company.  Layton had been sitting where I was on the plane, and I stared at the bullet holes in front of me on the trip north. The pilot was a gutsy guy to go back there less than a day after the shooting, and we definitely gave him a bonus.

(Layton was the only former Peoples Temple member to be tried in the United States for criminal acts relating to the murders at Jonestown. He was convicted on four different murder related counts, including conspiracy and aiding and abetting in the shootings of Congressman Ryan. He served 18 years, and was released in 2002, and to this day is the only person ever to have been held criminally responsible for the events in Guyana.)

The pilot circled a couple of times, tipping the wing so I could photograph the tableau of death, then headed to land on the dirt strip at Port Kaituma a few miles away.

The twin-engine Otter aircraft that had carried the ill-fated Congressional delegation, one of its tires shot flat, was off to the side of the runway. This was the scene of Rep. Ryan’s death, along with the murders of Don Harris, NBC cameraman Bob Brown, Greg Robinson, and temple defector Patricia Parks. Nine others were injured but survived including Jackie Spier, a Ryan aide, who is now the Congresswoman in her bosses’ old district, NBC’s Steve Sung, and San Francisco Examiner reporter Tim Reiterman. The bodies and the wounded were evacuated to Georgetown before we got there.

We walked around the disabled plane, and there was still evidence of remains at the scene. We buried them by the side of the runway.

Flash forward 40 years. Time hasn’t really brought any understanding to me of why people would do such a thing. To blindly follow a crazed leader unto death, and to murder your children doing it, doesn’t make any more sense to me now than it did then. As a person who has always had a fierce streak of individuality, it’s pretty much unfathomable. As a father, I’d like to think that I’ve passed some of that  independent thinking along to my three sons. It would be my greatest gift.