The secret letters of the Jonestown death cult

In 1993, my wife Jenny and I bought a small, beautiful, mid-century modern architectural house in the hills of Silver Lake, an enclave of East Los Angeles. We became aware that the previous owners, Dr Herbert and Mrs Freda Alexander, had lived for the previous 15 years with an awful family secret: their daughter Phyllis, son-in-law Gene Chaikin and two teenage grandchildren had died with 914 other members of Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple movement in the infamous Jonestown mass-murder/suicides of 18 November 1978. In an orderly manner, the Jonestown community, which included 250 children, had ingested a cocktail consisting of fruit punch, cyanide and sedatives. Infants, children and others unwilling to drink the liquid had it forced down their throats by syringe. Our estate agent mentioned that a cache of correspondence might have been left somewhere in the house by the Alexanders; we looked but found nothing until, earlier this year, a handy- man emerged from the foundations with a battered vinyl briefcase.