From 30 September to 5 October 1994, 53 members and 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 live on.
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. Twenty five members in Salvan 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 and 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. After the group faced internal and external scandals, it began to decline. The group was relatively unknown prior to these events.
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 was first introduced by Di Mambro in 1990 or 1991. It was to mean a voluntary departure of the members to another dimension in space, and they imagined the transit as a ritual involving magic fire, where they would undergo a spiritual voyage to the star Sirius. He told the members that they would be summoned on short notice, and would need to always be ready, as this could occur any day. Beginning in the late 1980s, several members began to doubt Di Mambro, with several scandals and issues disrupting its membership. In March 1993, Jouret and several other members became embroiled in a gun scandal. 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.
Di Mambro 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" Dutoit, 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. Tony Dutoit was in charge of the ceremonial special effects secretly 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, but this deeply offended him. Di Mambro was disturbed by the name similarity ('Emanuelle' versus 'Christopher Emmanuel') , 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 by the police. 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:
Prior to the deaths, many members made comments seen as concerning by those around them: in July 1994 Jean-Pierre Vinet told Hermann Delorme, who had left the OTS by that point, 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 mass suicide, 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 incident 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 at a restaurant with others. Several members were lured with the promise that they would get their money back. Di Mambro's son, Elie, told his coworkers that he was going to visit his father; he had previously been ideologically influenced by his father, but publicly expressed doubts and informed other members about the money issues, after which he was declared an enemy, but according to his sister still loved his father. Albert Giacobino and his friend Marie-Lou Rebaudo also went to Cheiry, on the promise that they would have money paid back to them. The same day, Daniel Jaton picked up his wife and children separately and brought them to Cheiry. At this time, Robert Falardeau (later to be killed as a "Traitor"), whom Jouret despised, was in Switzerland, having been called to sign papers with Di Mambro and get his money back, intending to return to Canada as soon as he could. He already booked a return flight, and had called his wife several times, seeming normal. His flight was delayed a single day; on 2 October, he called a friend and told them that "things are happening here" that he "[didn't] understand at all".
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