Don Harris (journalist) - Death in Guyana

Death in Guyana

On November 14, 1978, Harris accompanied California congressman Leo Ryan, NBC cameraman Bob Brown, NBC producer Bob Flick, NBC sound engineer Steve Sung and several other journalists to Georgetown, Guyana. The group was investigating rumors of torture, kidnapping and other offenses by the Peoples Temple in an agricultural commune located 150 miles from Georgetown that the Temple called Jonestown. Harris' son, Jeffrey Humphrey, said that Harris' family was not particularly worried about Harris' safety at the time because of the danger surrounding the war stories Harris had previously covered. Some of Harris' colleagues at NBC, however, had tried to talk him out of travelling to Guyana.

On November 17, Ryan, Harris and the other journalists flew to Jonestown. The Peoples Temple's lawyers, Mark Lane and Charles Garry, initially refused to allow Ryan's party access to Jonestown. After Temple leader Jim Jones allowed the party to enter Jonestown, that night, Harris and the Ryan delegation attended a reception in a pavilion in the settlement.

At that reception, unbeknownst to Jones, Temple member Vernon Gosney passed a note to Don Harris (mistaking him for Ryan), which read "Dear Congressman, Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby . Please help us get out of Jonestown." Harris then passed the note to Ryan. After the reception, Harris and other media members were informed that the Temple could not provide lodging for them in Jonestown, so that they had to travel to Port Kaituma for the night.

On November 18, when Harris and other journalists arrived back in Jonestown, Jim Jones' wife Marceline gave them a tour of the settlement. That afternoon, two families requested to leave with the Ryan delegation. Harris and other reporters were permitted to interview Jones. Jones told Harris and other reporters that, like others who left the Temple, the defectors would "lie" and destroy Jonestown.

That afternoon, Harris and the rest of the delegation traveled by Temple dump truck to the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip to depart for Georgetown. While attempting to board a twin-engine Otter airplane, a group of Temple members drove a red tractor pulling a trailer toward the airplane on which Harris was departing. "There might be violence," Harris half-jokingly said, and asked Bob Brown to take pictures. Members from the tractor and trailer opened fire on the entourage.

Bob Brown began filming the armed Peoples Temple members as they approached, and continued filming them as they opened fire on his unarmed party. As Brown filmed the shooters, they murdered him. Harris died in the attack, along with Ryan, Brown, San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson and defecting Temple member Patricia Parks. The murder of Congressman Ryan was the first and only murder of a Congressman in the line of duty in the history of the United States.

Later that same day, 909 inhabitants of Jonestown, 276 of them children, died of apparent cyanide poisoning, mostly in and around a pavilion. This resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Harris was survived by a wife, Shirley; two daughters, Claire and Lauren; and a son, Jeffrey who, following in his father's footsteps, is now a reporter in Spokane, WA for KXLY-TV. The family lived in Woodland Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.