More than 35 years after the infamous suicide-murder of some 900 people — many forced to drink a cyanide-laced grape punch — in Jonestown, Guyana, the cremated remains of nine of the victims were found in a dilapidated former funeral home in Delaware, officials said Thursday.
The discovery brought back memories of a tragedy that killed hundreds of children and a U.S. congressman and horrified Americans.
The remains were clearly marked, with the names of the deceased and place of their death included on accompanying death certificates, authorities said. Kimberly Chandler, spokeswoman for the Delaware Division of Forensic Science, declined to release the names of the nine people to The Associated Press. She said officials were working to notify relatives.
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After the deaths, bodies of 911 people who died in the massacre were brought to Dover Air Force Base, home to the U.S. military’s largest mortuary. Many of the bodies were decomposed and could not be identified. Several cemeteries refused to take them until the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California, stepped forward in 1979 and accepted 409 bodies.
The remaining victims were cremated or buried in family cemeteries.
Dover funeral director William Torbert Sr., 79, said the Air Force asked five or six local funeral homes to help process the remains.
It’s not unusual for families to authorize cremation and then leave the ashes unclaimed at funeral homes, said Torbert and other Delaware funeral directors.
3 decades later, remains of Jonestown bodies found - The Washington Post
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