New York Bureau Chief Donald Neff and Photographer David Hume Kennerly heard the bulletin in Miami early Sunday morning: a Congressman had been killed on a remote jungle airstrip in Guyana. Neff and Kennerly, who had worked together in Saigon, were en route to another assignment in South America, but they chartered a jet and were in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, by nightfall.

By dawn Monday, as news of more murders and suicides spread, scores of reporters and photographers scrambled to arrange transportation for the trip to Jonestown. Only one plane, with its required Guyanese pilot, was available for the journey. After hours of haggling, Neff and Kennerly finally got the plane and permission from the Guyana government to land at the bloodied site. The plane turned out to be the same five-passenger Cessna that had been waiting for Congressman Ryan on the night of his murder. Blood still stained the seat belts, and two bullet holes were punched in the doors

"The horrors of that camp nearly defy description," says Neff. "Kennerly and I helped report the Viet Nam War, but we'd never seen anything remotely like this." In the first days only 14 reporters and photographers reached Jonestown, three from TIME. The third was Matthew Naythons, a practicing doctor from San Francisco who doubles as a news photographer. Naythons had been scheduled to accompany Congressman Ryan's party but had been held back by a visa problem.

Later in the week, Correspondent Robert Geline arrived in Guyana. Lack of transportation to Jonestown kept him and other journalists in Georgetown. But on Thanksgiving Day many survivors from Jonestown took up lodgings at Geline's hotel and they were outwardly calm and willing to talk. Geline recalls, "I was deeply moved, fascinated and horrified by what I heard.

These people had lived in hell, There is no way they or any of us who heard their stories will be the same."

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