Jonestown Massacre: Aftermath Still Haunts First Responders (original) (raw)

But in 1977, with a damning article about abuses within the Temple about to break, Jones and nearly a thousand of his followers fled to land the Temple had previously purchased in Guyana.

Less than a year later, most of them would be dead. The bodies that would need to be brought back totaled more than 900.

Those bodies were taken to the base mortuary for identification and in some cases autopsy; the remains would eventually be stored on base in Hangar 1301.

At the time, Patricia Edwards had worked for seven years as a civilian employee at Dover AFB, where she still is until today. Now working in the Airman and Family Readiness Center, back then Edwards’ job was to manage logistics.

“I had to recruit individuals that would work in the mortuary environment and to make sure that there was enough staff and administrators to handle the Jonestown situation,” she told me.

“I found out about Jonestown like everyone else did back then, through the media,” she said. It was from those reports that Edwards and her colleagues found out just how much of a job they would have to do, and quickly. “What would normally take about two to three weeks had to be done in one,” Edwards said.