Relatives of some of the 913 people who followed a cult leader to their deaths in a South American jungle on Tuesday marked the 25th anniversary of the infamous Jonestown Massacre.
Friends and family members of the onetime disciples of Reverend Jim Jones held a somber ceremony at a cemetry in Oakland, near San Francisco where 409 victims of the massacre are buried.
Jones' followers died in one of the worst mass murder-suicides in recent history after being forced to drink cyanide-laced punch or shot in Guyana on November 18, 1978.
Around 150 relatives of the dead buried in the Evergreen cemetery gathered to mark the grisly anniversary, including two of Jones' sons.
The San Francisco preacher set up his own self-sufficient society, the People's Temple, in the jungle before he dramatically ended more than 900 lives as it seemed he was on the cusp of being exposed as a crazed false prophet.
"One of the things that we didn't know is how many people wanted to leave, because no one talked about it publicly," survivor Laura Johnston Kohl told CNN.
"Jim was not interested in having people leave and so people did not talk about it."
Residents of Jonestown took part in suicide "drills" long before the end, as the dramatic Jones became increasingly isolated and "crazier."
"Jim was getting sicker, going crazier and crazier, and all of us isolated, all the people who lived in Guyana only heard what was going on in the world through Jim," she said.
Among the mourners at the ceremony was California state Senator Jackie Speier, who was in Guyana when the massacre took place. Some reluctant devotees who refused to drink the poisoned drink were shot dead or given lethal injections.
Speier was a legal counsel to slain representative Leo Ryan, who was shot dead on the tarmac of Jonestown's airport while investigating reports that Jones was holding members of the People's Temple against their wills.
As the shooting took place at the airport, a mass suicide was underway in Jones' "utopian" jungle enclave.
Speier lay on the runway for 22 hours, bleeding and covered with ants, convinced she was dying after Jones's henchmen opened fire on the party, the senator's staff director, Richard Steffen, said.
Two bullets remain in her body as a reminder; they are lodged too close to vital organs to be removed.
"She sets off metal detectors at airports all the time," Steffen said, lightening the somber topic with humor. "It is really hard for her to talk about this stuff.
"I know on Jackie's part, she wants to get closure. It is 25 years, there will be some spotlight on it, and lets move on."
A prototype memorial wall, marked with a heart, stood near the graves and will remain while plans are finalized to replace it with something permanent, according to cemetery workers.
Jones' sons, Stephen and Jim Jones Jr, took part in the ceremony along with local civic leaders.
The memorial ceremony, which was more sparsely attended than one held five years earlier, lasted about two hours.
A native of the midwestern US state of Indiana, Jones cultivated a strong following in Northern California in the 1970s, and eventually moved his congregation to Guyana in 1974.