Jones was a voracious reader who studied Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Mahatma Gandhi, and Adolf Hitler. He also developed an intense interest in religion. One writer suggests this was primarily because he found it difficult to make friends. Childhood acquaintances recalled Jones as a "really weird kid" who was obsessed with religion and death, alleging that he frequently held funerals for small animals on his parents' property and that he had stabbed a cat to death. One childhood acquaintance noted that, after German prisoners-of-war arrived in Lynn during World War II, one patted young Jones on the back of the head, to which he responded by giving the Nazi salute and shouting "Heil Hitler!"