Don Harris (September 8, 1936 – November 18, 1978) was an NBC News correspondent who was killed after departing Jonestown, an agricultural commune owned by the Peoples Temple in Guyana. On November 18, 1978, he and four others (including Leo Ryan) were killed by gunfire by Temple members at a nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma, Guyana. Their murders preceded the death of 909 Temple members in Jonestown and four Temple members in Georgetown, Guyana.

Early life and career

Harris, whose real name was Roy Darwin Humphrey, was born near Vidalia, Georgia. The group was investigating rumors of torture, kidnapping and other offenses by the Peoples Temple in an agricultural commune located from Georgetown that the Temple called Jonestown. Some of Harris' colleagues at NBC, however, had tried to talk him out of traveling to Guyana.

On November 17, Ryan, Harris and the other journalists flew 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 [another Temple member]. Please help us get out of Jonestown." Harris then passed the note to Ryan.

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. 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. Harris died in the attack, along with Ryan, Brown, San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson and defecting Temple member Patricia Parks.

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 for KXLY-TV in Spokane, Washington.

Notes

References

  • President Carter's statement on Harris's murder
  • Don Harris at Findagrave
  • Mike Shannon's "Profile: News 8 etc..."