Marjorie Balisok of Huntsville, Texas, went to the grave believing that her son, Jerry Balisok

 Marjorie Balisok of Huntsville, Texas, went to the grave believing that her son, Jerry Balisok, died in the infamous Jonestown Massacre in 1978 in Guyana. 

While watching the news on the mass-murder, Marjorie was adamant that she saw the body of her son and his wife, Deborah, amongst the hundreds of lifeless bodies that flashed upon her screen. 



However, State Department officials said that her son was not among the victims. Marjorie refused to believe them and waged a battle to have her son’s body removed from the Oakland’s Evergreen Cemetery among the 412 unclaimed bodies from the Jonestown Massacre. To do this, however, she first needed the State Department to declare that her son was dead. They refused.


Marjorie installed a headstone on an empty plot in Maple Hill Cemetery which read: “Jerry Bibb Balisok, born Sept. 8, 1955. Murdered in Guyana Nov 18, 1978. Buried in Oakland Cal. May 1979. DAMN THE STATE DEPT.” Three years later, Marjorie died and was buried alongside her son’s headstone. However, in 1990, a man who was being tried for attempted murder in Seattle, Washington, was identified as Jerry Balisok. 

As it turned out, Jerry had never been in Guyana. He had fled the United States to avoid apprehension for a number of crimes including arson and forgery.

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