Sunday, November 11, 2018
40 Years Ago This Month; Jonestown Massacre; KGO-TV's Van Amburg Breaks into Movie And Describes The Scene; 415 Media Remembrs (Video)
IT WAS 40 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH --Nov. 18th, 1978 to be exact but it seems like yesterday. The horror of the Jonestown mass-murder/suicide; one of the most tragic, difficult, Bay Area news stories ever.
Among the dead: Congressman Leo Ryan, who was shot and killed at a remote air strip. An aide for Ryan, Jackie Spier, today Congresswoman Spier was wounded in the attack but survived.
The above video is that of Van Amburg of KGO-TV; just two days after the massacre, KGO was running a Monday night movie. KGO broke into the movie and began showing the chilling images from the Jonestown compound.
KGO's GSA Reporter, Peter Cleaveland, was in the capitol and also described in detail the horrific goings-on. Pay attention to this as it is both informative and riveting --dreadful as it was.
The woman anchor sitting next to Van is Marcia Brandwynne.
A warning: some of the images seen in the video are disturbing.
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Remember it well. My cousin was one of the many dead. She joined Jones in Ukiah when he was up there. Sad all the way around.
ReplyDeleteI too remember the grisly mass murders of Jonestown. Not because I was there, but because I knew some of the murdered victims, including NBC correspondent Don Harris and cameraman Bob Brown all who worked out of the NBC bureau in San Francisco located at the Jack Tarr hotel. Don was based out of LA, but made the trek to San Francisco almost on a daily basis, so you might as well call him a San Francisco based correspondent. One other who survived the tragic attack at that airstrip was my old buddy Bob Flick who was the bureau chief. He was the one who was able to hide in the tall grass at the airstrip till the killers left and retrieved the videotape from Bob's camera. I was working at KRON at the time and remember when we received the first video form our own cameraman that showed the horrific aerial shots showing the hundreds of bodies strewn all over that compound. I also remember being stationed for days behind the People's Temple on Geary Street as we didn't know if those who were inside were going to cause terror to the people in the area. November of that year was one we will never forget especially after what happened six days later.
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