Nation: Hurry, My Children, Hurry

A recording reveals the death throes of the Jim Jones cult

First had come the numbing photos: nearly 900 colorfully clad bodies clustered near a vat of poison. Next, the anguished accounts of the bewildering tragedy by its few survivors. Last week, nearly four months after they had occurred, the mass deaths at Jonestown in the remoteness of Guyana's jungles took on a new and far more personal dimension. Americans sat in their living rooms and heard the actual sounds of the Peoples Temple dying.

In an incredible aftermath to a bizarre event, NBC television...