James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American cult leader, mass murderer, political activist, and self-professed faith healer who led the Peoples Temple, a new religious organization which existed between 1955 and 1978. Jones and his inner circle orchestrated a mass murder-suicide of himself and his followers in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978.

Jones founded the organization that would become the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1955. Jones distinguished himself with his civil rights activism, founding the Temple as a fully integrated congregation. In 1965, he moved the Temple to California, where the group established its headquarters in San Francisco and became heavily involved in left-wing politics through the 1970s. Jones then left the U.S. and established Jonestown, compelling many of his followers to live there with him.

By 1978, media reports had surfaced of human rights abuses at Jonestown. Deciding to investigate these reports, U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a delegation to the commune in November of that year. While boarding a return flight with some former Temple members who had wished to leave, Ryan and four others were murdered by gunmen dispatched from Jonestown. Jones then ordered and likely coerced a mass murder-suicide that claimed the lives of 918 commune members, 304 of them children, almost all by cyanide-poisoned Flavor Aid.