Leo Ryan
Politician
Former California representative who is the first U.S. Member of Congress to be killed in the line of duty.
In 1970,while presiding as chairman of the Assembly committee that oversaw prison reform, he investigated the conditions of California prisons by being held as an inmate in Folsom Prison.
He was assassinated in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple shortly before the Jonestown Massacre, in which over 900 Temple members killed themselves, in 1978.
He has five children. He was sent to investigate the People's Temple, led by cult leader Jim Jones, in Guyana. He was assassinated by cult members in 1978.
He was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress and signed by President Ronald Reagan.