Cole Waterman’s reporting beat typically focuses on crime and public safety in and around Bay City.
This week, however, he has traveled back 45 years to one of the most notorious crime scenes in history, nearly 3,000 miles away from Michigan – and made it a compelling local story.
Shirlee Fields and her family were among the 900-plus people who died in a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. She also was a Bay City native, and Waterman’s meticulous research and reporting have produced a five-part series that provide fresh insights into the madness.
“I've always had an interest in Jonestown – I’ve read biographies and watched documentaries,” Waterman said. “Around 2019 I was reading the list of all 918 (victims) … I did a search of Michigan just out of curiosity. There were eight, and the eighth one was from Bay City.”
That tidbit stayed with him until September, when he realized that the 45th anniversary of the event – the suicides occurred on Nov. 18 – was coming up. He started digging in, thinking maybe he’d get one article out of what looked like a bit of historical trivia.
But the more he dug into archives, the more he tracked down sources and the more he learned about the life and mindset of Fields, the more he plunged in.
“It got a little obsessive on my end,” he said. “Almost every day I would come home and tell my girlfriend, ‘Look what I found.’”
He found Bay City Times news tidbits about her mundane activities as a child, and also located high school classmates of Fields’ from the 1950s. They remembered her but none knew she had died, let alone been at Jonestown. “It was a little weird giving them the news that their friend died … before I was born.”
Then Waterman scored an interview with Jim Jones’ son, Stephan Jones, who knew Fields and her family and related anecdotes about them from their time in Jonestown. Waterman found letters written by Fields, and even has an audio recording of cult leader Jones and Fields in a group discussion.
Waterman used what he gathered to masterfully build a narrative that shows how Fields could start as a bright, progressive young woman in Bay City and end up dead by her own hand in South America. The series also tracks Jim Jones’ start as an activist for civil rights and social change in America through his evolution into a paranoid and dystopian autocrat in the Guyana jungle.
“No one who joined it was forced or kidnapped into it; they all gravitated toward it because they already had their ideals or philosophy or theology and (Jones) aligned with it,” Waterman said. “The part I found so fascinating is that he started with this charitable, selfless, social mission, railing against all the right things.”
Though Jonestown remains one of the most infamous events in world history and has been the subject of many books and documentaries, Waterman was able to bring fresh perspective by focusing on the mindset and motivations of one committed adherent.
"This is an amazing piece of journalism – well-researched, well-documented, but also always focusing on the human side of the story,” wrote Rebecca Moore, who lost two sisters at Jonestown and runs The Jonestown Institute website, in an email to Waterman.
That human side of the story was Shirlee’s story. Bay City was the common thread she shared with Waterman. The story can help us understand universal themes that resonate today.
“Stephan Jones told me why the whole matter is still relevant and what we can learn from it,” Waterman said.
“If you find yourself part of some movement or organization that doesn't allow dissent or questioning or the leader puts him or herself above or everybody else – and, obviously, that’s still happening today – that's a warning sign to maybe get out of that group.”
