Religious mass murder-suicide
From 30 September to 5 October 1994, 53 members or former members of the Order of the Solar Temple died in a series of mass murders and suicides in Morin-Heights, Quebec, Canada, and in Cheiry and Salvan in Switzerland. The Solar Temple, or OTS, was founded in 1984, active in several Francophone countries. The group was led by Joseph Di Mambro with Luc Jouret as a second in command; the group had a theological doctrine that by committing suicide, one would not die, but "transit"; they conceptualized the transit as a ritual involving magic fire, where they would undergo a spiritual voyage to the star Sirius, where they would continue their lives.
Following several scandals and outside pressures the group faced, this idea became more prominent. They began to plan the "transit" and wrote a letter declaring their intents and purposes in the act, called "The Testament". On 30 September 1994, the Dutoit family, former members, were ritualistically murdered in Morin-Heights, including their infant child, by members Joël Egger, Jerry Genoud, and Dominique Bellaton; Di Mambro held a grievance against the Dutoits for past betrayal and may have believed their child to be the antichrist. On the night of 2 to 3 October, 23 members in Cheiry in Switzerland, many of those considered "Traitors" to the movement were killed via gunshot by Egger and Jouret. The members in Salvan, numbered 25, died from poison injections.
The bodies in Switzerland were found on 5 October. In all, 53 people died, including several children. Both Jouret and Di Mambro died in the mass suicide in Salvan. Some of the deaths were genuine suicides, but others were murdered for betraying the movement; many members had been lured into death with the promise that money they had given to the group would be returned to them. Others may have consented to being killed by other members, but it is not known how many agreed to die. The locations were then set on fire with an automated ignition system triggered by telephone. The investigation was criticized for some of its decisions, and several aspects spawned conspiracy theories.
The group was obscure prior to the deaths, but following the discovery of the bodies and the suicides it became notorious, resulting in a media frenzy. The events strengthened the anti-cult movement in Europe and abroad. Though the group's leaders died in the incident, mass suicides/murders of remaining members followed in 1995 in France and in Canada in 1997.
Background.
The Order of the Solar Temple was a religious group active in several French-speaking countries, led by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret. Founded in 1984, it was a neo-Templar secret society with eclectic beliefs sourced from many different movements like Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and the New Age. The group reached its peak of membership in January 1989, with 442 members but following scandals, it began to decline. The group was quite obscure prior to the events that would occur.
Cheiry is a hamlet of about 280 people in the Canton of Fribourg, about south of the Swiss city of Fribourg, while Granges-sur-Salvan is a resort town about away from Cheiry in the Canton of Valais. Morin-Heights is a resort town near Montreal, Quebec, in the Laurentian Mountains, then with a population of 4,000. Jouret, Di Mambro, and Camille Pilet (a retired sales direct of the Piaget SA watch company) owned 3 villas in Granges-sur-Salvan, as well as a luxury condominium complex in Morin-heights. The group owned a farm called in Cheiry.
The "transit" concept had first been brought up by Di Mambro in 1990 or 1991. It was to mean a voluntary departure of the members to another dimension in space, or an act of consent to bring the "germ of life" to another planet. He told the members that they would be summoned on short notice, and would need to be ready as this could occur any day. They conceptualized the transit as a ritual involving magic fire, where they would undergo a spiritual voyage to the star Sirius. According to the later testimony of members, they did not interpret it as mass suicide. According to Di Mambro, he did not know yet how they would transit, though he metaphorically evoked the ideas of being picked up by a flying saucer or passing across a mirror.
Beginning in the late 1980s, several members began to doubt Di Mambro, and several scandals and issues rocked its membership. In March 1993, Jouret and several other members became embroiled in a gun scandal. Jouret had asked members Hermann Delorme and Jean-Pierre Vinet to buy three semi-automatic guns with silencers, illegal in Canada, resulting in the three being arrested. Properties were raided by police in March of that year, and several members were arrested. Jouret and the other two men were given only light sentences after the crime (one year of unsupervised probation and a $1000 fine intended to be paid to the Red Cross), but in the aftermath the media took interest in the group. The Canadian press began to report, using information gained from police wiretaps, conversations between members of the OTS, which they described as a "doomsday cult". Following the gun scandal, Jouret became very paranoid and concerned with purported injustice. He began speaking of the transit concept previously established by Di Mambro.
The OTS viewed itself as increasingly persecuted, though according to Jean-François Mayer, there was little actual opposition to the group. The leadership believed the increasing legal and media attention to be both a conspiracy against the OTS and a sign of the Kali Yuga, and the group's ideas became increasingly focused on environmental destruction and ecological collapse. Di Mambro also believed his daughter Emmanuelle, the "cosmic child", to be under threat from the antichrist; he reportedly believed the antichrist was born to Antonio "Tony" and Suzanne "Nickie" Dutoi, though this interpretation has been disputed. Tony Dutoit, a Swiss citizen, was formerly very close to Di Mambro, to the point where he was considered his adopted son. He was the one in charge of the ceremonial special effects staged by the group. After 1991, he distanced himself and had threatened to reveal that the effects were fake. His wife Nicky Dutoit had been for some time responsible for educating Di Mambro's daughter. Di Mambro had previously forbidden Nicky from having children following a miscarriage, but after she left the group, she and Antonio had a son, who they named Christopher Emmanuel. The Dutoits had invited Di Mambro to be the godfather of this child; Di Mambro was deeply offended by the name similarity, the disobeying of his instructions, and that he had not been consulted in the naming of the infant.
Planning.
Di Mambro and Jouret's original plan seemed to have been a mass suicide in early 1993; following Jouret's arrest that year, plans for a "transit" were found on his computer. However, due to the esoteric language, the police failed to understand what the documents meant. This original transit was intended to take place at a luxury house in the village of Saint-Sauveur in the Laurentians in Canada, where the OTS had an underground ceremonial crypt. After the police raid Di Mambro ordered OTS members to destroy the crypt and empty the house, viewing it as having been ruined by the intrusion; the transit plans were then postponed and moved to Switzerland. An agent of the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) claimed that if this had gone according to plan there may have been anywhere from 60 to 80 dead. According to another interpretation, however, this may have only sped up their plans.
Di Mambro, according to former members, felt cornered; he was sick, with financial issues, and worried that his lies would be uncovered. In a tape likely dating to early 1994, Jouret and Di Mambro discussed the Waco siege, saying that the Branch Davidians had "beaten us to the punch", with Di Mambro telling Jouret that "what we'll do will be even more spectacular". In another tape from early 1994, Di Mambro stated:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;We are rejected by the whole world. First by the people, the people can no longer withstand us. And our Earth, fortunately she rejects us. How would we leave [otherwise]? We also reject this planet. We wait for the day we can leave … life for me is intolerable, intolerable, I can’t go on. So think about the dynamic that will get us to go elsewhere.Prior to the deaths, many members made concerning comments: Jean-Pierre Vinet would tell Hermann Delorme in July 1994 that "I’m leaving definitely [...] You probably will never see me again. You don't have anything left to accomplish, but I do." Another told a relative that one day the members would depart to Venus, and that when they went there was no reason to be sad. Another member gave her daughter a will, telling her that "one never knows what might happen".
Preparations.
To prepare for the transit, specific missions were given to the most faithful members. Towards the end of August, the Genouds left Switzerland and went to Canada; prior to this, Colette closed her bank account. They then bought the equipment that would be used in the Morin Heights ignition system. Bellaton arrived in Canada on 17 September. Di Mambro ordered two group members, Jerry Genoud and Joël Egger, to kill the Dutoit child.
Egger, a former rock musician, had an adolescence full of problems, with a past of drug addiction and his father dying by suicide. When he met Jouret, he "[became] his God"; he was described as "completely under the spell" of the leaders. He was the group's handyman and occasionally Di Mambro's driver. A former member described him as "a petty criminal, willful, very easy to subjugate, very fanatical but without any spiritual scope." Genoud was loyal to Jouret, having been a member of the Golden Way since 1979. According to the SQ, they found a written ritual procedure outlining how the baby had to be killed. The drugs were acquired as well, stored in a cupboard, with Jouret writing a note on what drugs to use; he noted that children could be more resistant, so the dose of sedatives must be doubled.
During the last meeting of the order, On 24 September 1994, the group was renamed as the Alliance Rose Croix (ARC), announced by Tabachnik. The group claimed the renaming was in order to reach "the irreversible stage of the return to the Father" and the "Vth Reign", which would lead to the abolition of hierarchies. The group was told that the end was near and that the planets were in formation for Solomon's Leap, and that now they must prepare. Everyone who witnessed this ceremony would die in the 1994 transit, barring Patrick Vuarnet, Jean Vuarnet's son. Vuarnet, when interviewed by police, claimed that while he had actually been shown a "testament from the Rosy-Cross" on video cassette during the Avignon meeting, he had not noticed any difference with the other messages since it was always about the world ending, and that they had not seen the full thing; in this video, the "transit" is discussed with little ambiguity. Vuarnet died in the next mass suicide of the group in the Vercors in 1995.
On the 29th, many of the most faithful members gathered in Cheiry, apparently understanding what was to come. Patrick Vuarnet said that while he was not included, his mother Edith Vuarnet had attended and she described it as wonderful. One member, Joël Egger, was not included, as he was flying to Canada to execute a "mission" (to kill the Dutoits). Upon arriving in Canada, he met with Dominique Bellaton and Collette and Jerry Genoud in a chalet owned by Di Mambro in Morin-Heights. On 30 September, Di Mambro had a meal with some followers near Montreux in Switzerland; according to an attendee (Vuarnet) Di Mambro had asked him to meet them, including Jouret and Pilet. They were joined shortly after by Daniel Jaton, who went off to speak with Jouret. The only two people besides Vuarnet at this meeting who did not die in the 1994 transit were Jean-Pierre Lardanchet and Patrick Rostan. Both of them died in the following 1995 transit.
The next day, Jouret was in Salvan, where records and eyewitness testimony place him on the phone, and was seen late in the day