Mass Murder Retold--
but hopefully not relived

November 1998 was the month when some of the most notorious mass murder cases from the past arose anew. On November 18, the newpapers across the country recounted the twenty year anniversary of the Jim Jones & The People's Temple tragedy. That was the day the zealous Jones ordered his followers, more than 900 people, 260 of which were children, to drink cyanide-laced punch in Jonestown, Guyana. The cult also killed Congressman Leo Ryan and four other members of his fact-finding party in a nearby airstrip.

Every year since that dreadul event, a memorial is held at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California, where the 260 children are buried. The children were buried in a mass grave, because the bodies were unidentifiable, due to a lack of dental records.

This year, the memorial made headlines again when Liz Aguirre, president of Ultraseal International, gave a $5,000 check to finance a 20-foot wall-like memorial to be erected in the cemetery for the deceased children. The black, granite memorial will have the names and ages of the children, and an inscription written by poet, Maya Angelou.

Mass murder John Wayne Gacy was also in the news many years after his death. Suspecting that the bodies of four more victims remained in the apartment building on Chicago’s Northwest side where Gacy’s mother once lived, investigators started excavating the area. They focused on the parking lot in the back of the apartment building, cordoning off a large area on November 23. The investigation aroused a lot of excitement, and the residents of the area knew no peace as reporters, helicopters, and television crews descended on the scene. Witnesses say that reporters and cameramen even perched on nearby rooftops, hoping to get a glimpse of something juicy.

However, the investigators turned up nothing other than a flattened sauce pan, a marble, a chunk of concrete and wire. Police Commander, John Thomas, told the disappointed press that no further digging would take place. He added, "We took as comprehensive and responsible a look as we were required to do. We'd like to return the neighborhood to a state of normalcy."

And last, but not least, Charles Whitman, the snipper, who went to the top of the University of Texas tower and picked off 16 people with a high-powered rifle made headlines again. On November 11, the University of Texas board of regents announced that they had voted unanimously to reopen the school's 231-foot clocktower, which was closed 23 years ago following the disaster. The tower was also the scene of many suicides, since many people had used it to jump to their deaths from the observation deck. The tower will be refurbished and a safety barrier added to prevent future suicides. According to Larry Faulkner, President of the University of Texas, the University wants to create "positive experiences for new generations." He also said that he doesn’t want students to remember, “nothing but the history of unfortunate experiences associated with the tower."