Leo Ryan

Leo Joseph Ryan Jr. (May 5, 1925 – November 18, 1978) was an American teacher and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the U.S. Representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until his assassination as part of the Jonestown massacre in 1978. After the Watts Riots of 1965, Ryan took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate and document conditions in the area. In 1970 he decided to investigate the conditions at California prisons. While presiding as chairman of the Assembly committee that oversaw prison reform, he used a pseudonym to enter Folsom Prison as an inmate. During his time in Congress, Ryan traveled to Newfoundland to investigate the practice of seal hunting. He was also famous for vocal criticism of the lack of Congressional oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and authored the Hughes–Ryan Amendment, passed in 1974. Ryan was shot and killed at an airstrip in Guyana in November 1978 while his party was attempting to escape a dangerous situation. He had traveled to Guyana to investigate claims that people were being held against their will at the Peoples Temple Jonestown settlement. Ryan was killed the same day as the mass suicide, 11 days after he was reelected to a fourth term. He was the second sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives to be assassinated in office, after James M. Hinds in 1868. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1983.