What happened to the bodies from Jonestown?
Following the deaths in Jonestown, the U.S. and Guyanese governments negotiated over the disposition of the bodies. The delays in securing the Jonestown site and the tropical jungle conditions meant that the remains had already started to decompose by the time they were discovered, and it might have been difficult from the start to gather conclusive evidence of what happened. However, the additional delays, the proposal which was circulated – and then withdrawn – to bury the bodies in the jungle, the decision to try to slow decomposition by embalming, and the lack of medical examiners at the scene all served to compromise whatever forensic information was gathered. The bodies of the Jonestown dead were airlifted to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, thousands of miles across the country from where most relatives and friends of the Temple members lived. Autopsies were performed on seven of the bodies, but the length of time between the deaths and the autopsies, which had been complicated
