Leo Ryan

Ryan was the second sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives to be assassinated in office, after James M. Hinds in 1868.

Leo Joseph Ryan Jr. (May 5, 1925 – November 18, 1978) was an American teacher and politician.

Before that, he served in the California State Assembly, representing the state's 27th district.

He served less than a year before being elected to the California State Assembly, winning the 27th district race by 20,000 votes.

Ryan graduated from Campion Jesuit High School in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, in 1943.

He then received V-12 officer training at Bates College and served with the United States Navy from 1943 to 1946 as a submariner.

Ryan graduated from Nebraska's Creighton University with a B.A. in 1949 and an M.S. in 1951.

He served as a teacher, school administrator and South San Francisco city councilman from 1956 to 1962.

He had run for the Assembly's 25th district in 1958, but lost to Republican Louis Francis.

He taught English at Capuchino High School, and chaperoned the marching band in 1961 to Washington, D.C., to participate in President John F. Kennedy's inaugural parade.

Ryan was inspired by Kennedy's call to service in his inaugural address and decided to run for higher office.

In 1962 Ryan was elected mayor of South San Francisco.

Ryan served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1964 and 1968 and held his Assembly seat until 1972, when he was elected to the United States House of Representatives.

He was reelected three times.

Ryan aide Jackie Speier, who later served in Congress, described Ryan's style of investigation as "experiential legislating".

After the 1965 Watts riots, Ryan took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate and document conditions in the Los Angeles area.

After the Watts riots of 1965, Ryan went to the area and took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate and document conditions there.

In 1970, he launched an investigation into California prisons.

While presiding as chairman of the Assembly committee that oversaw prison reform, he used a pseudonym to enter Folsom State Prison as an inmate.

During his time in Congress, Ryan traveled to Newfoundland to investigate the practice of seal hunting.

In 1970, using a pseudonym, Ryan had himself arrested, detained, and strip-searched to investigate conditions in California's prisons.

He stayed for ten days as an inmate at Folsom State Prison while presiding as chairman on the Assembly committee that oversaw prison reform.

As a California assemblyman, Ryan also chaired legislative subcommittee hearings and presided over hearings involving Tom Lantos, his eventual successor in the House.

Ryan pushed through significant educational policies and authored what came to be known as the Ryan Act, which established an independent regulatory commission to monitor educational credentialing in California.

During his time in Congress, Ryan went to Newfoundland with James Jeffords to investigate the inhumane killing of seals, and became famous for his vocal criticism of the lack of Congressional oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), authoring the Hughes–Ryan Amendment, which would have required extensive CIA notification of Congress about covert operations.

Ryan once told Dick Cheney that leaking a state secret was an appropriate way for a member of Congress to block an "ill-conceived operation".

He supported Patty Hearst, and along with Senator S. I. Hayakawa, delivered Hearst's application for a presidential commutation to the Pardon Attorney.

A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the U.S. representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until his assassination during the Jonestown massacre in 1978.

He was also known for his vocal criticism of the lack of congressional oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and co-authored the Hughes–Ryan Amendment, passed in 1974, which requires the president of the United States to report covert CIA activity to Congress.

Ryan was friends with the father of former Temple member Bob Houston, whose mutilated body was found near train tracks on October 5, 1976, three days after a taped telephone conversation with Houston's ex-wife in which they discussed his leaving the Temple.

Ryan's interest was further aroused by the custody battle between the leader of a "Concerned Relatives" group, Timothy Stoen, and Jones following a Congressional "white paper" by Stoen detailing the events.

Ryan was one of 91 congressmen to write Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham on Stoen's behalf.

After reading an article in The San Francisco Examiner, Ryan declared his intention to go to Jonestown, an agricultural commune in Guyana where Jones and roughly 1,000 Temple members resided.

In 1978, Ryan traveled to Guyana to investigate claims that people were being held against their will at the Peoples Temple Jonestown settlement.

He was shot and killed at an airstrip on November 18, as he and his party were attempting to leave.

Shortly after the airstrip shootings, 909 members of the Jonestown settlement died in a mass murder–suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid.

In 1978, reports of widespread abuse and human rights violations in Jonestown at the Peoples Temple, led by cult leader Jim Jones, began to filter out of its Guyana enclaves.

Ryan was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1983.

Ryan was born in Lincoln, Nebraska.

During his early life his family moved frequently, through Illinois, Florida, New York, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts.