Whatever he did after a certain time in his life... he was hooked on power. Whatever he did to try to help people was to keep them tied to him. He would not let his wife leave or do anything separate from him. The reason he had them drink the drink, was they found out what he was doing and was coming to get the people out of there. He killed them rather than give them freedom. He had them practice the drinking before it was the real thing.. and they did not know this last one was real. They just obeyed him.
They knew pretty quickly it was real. The audio tapes captured a lot of pain and sorrow that day.
It wasn’t a quick death, 5 minutes and it’s all over.