A very strange sight met their eyes. Around a triangular altar, with their feet at the centre and their heads outward, lay 18 bodies. They were all dressed in identical robes, and bottles of champagne littered the floor around them. Similarly to Albert Giacobino, most had plastic bags tied around their heads, where they had been shot. Some had been suffocated, and some also beaten. Another three bodies were found in a second secret room. Bags of petrol were discovered in a chapel situated next to this building. From the explosives in the house, and these rigged devices, it seemed that an attempt to set fire to the whole place had failed.
GRANGES-SUR-SALVAN, SWITZERLAND
The same night, again in Switzerland, another fire was reported. Three ski chalets in the resort of Granges- sur-Salvan were alight. The fact that all three houses were burning suggested that it was no accident. Indeed, it wasn’t. Numerous petrol bombs had been suspended and exploded, and in total 25 bodies were recovered. Again, most had been shot in the head.
A link began to emerge between the two Swiss fires. After the difficult process of identification, it transpired that all the victims had belonged to the Order of the Solar Temple. The buildings were in fact the property of the sect. Autopsies proved that overall, 15 of the deaths had been suicide. The rest were murder.
Meanwhile in Canada, the two bodies found in the rented home of the Dutoit family were identified as Gerry and Collette Genoud, a Swiss couple who also belonged to Di Mambro’s Order of the Solar Temple. The incidents were clearly related.
JO DI MAMBRO
Born in France in 1924, Jo Di Mambro originally trained as a horologist, but his real interest was in religion and spirituality. He was a member of the ‘Rosicrucian Order’ (Ancient and Mystic Order of the Rosy Cross) for 13 years, but during this time he developed his own religious ideas and beliefs and decided to move east, close to the Swiss border, to set up his own school, the ‘Centre for the Preparation of the New Age’. Charges of fraud and swindling may have precipitated this departure. Followers whom he had met and influenced while in the Rosicrucians went with him.
Di Mambro had radical ideas. He claimed to be reincarnated, but the identity of his former self changed frequently – sometimes religious, sometimes political. He also named the members of his group as reincarnations of famous people. He organised marriages between his followers and dictated who amongst them was permitted to produce children. His own children, he claimed were exceptional. His son would shape the world, and his daughter was one of only nine ‘cosmic children’, a Messiah who would bring about his much-prophesised New Age. He took money and personal possessions from his followers in order to care for the needs of the community. With donations from some of the more wealthy families, Di Mambro purchased a mansion in Geneva. He was even attracting devotees from outside the community who had heard of his teachings and generously donated cash sums to his cause.
LUC JOURET
‘The Foundation of the Golden Way’, which Di Mambro founded in 1978, became the Order of the Solar Temple (officially known as the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition) in 1984 after Di Mambro had recruited the charismatic Luc Jouret. Jouret was a Belgian doctor and obstetrician, and his entry into the group was a turning point for Di Mambro. He was a charming and compelling man and worked ceaselessly for Di Mambro in recruiting new members and acting as guide and prophet. A medical doctor by training, he had also embraced spiritual healing and homeopathic medicine while travelling in India, and many people came to the Order of the Solar Temple, attracted by him.
Jouret believed himself to be both the third reincarnation of Christ, and also a former member of the Knight’s Templar, a secret, 14th century Christian order founded by French crusaders in Jerusalem. It was therefore rumoured that he was in possession of a deeper spiritual knowledge and guarded deep religious secrets. He preached that when death came and the spiritual body departed from the physical body, only the members of the Order of the Solar Temple would ascend and meet again on the star Sirius where a better life would continue for them. He warned though that they may have to make this transition before their physical body had died naturally. The earth was slowly being destroyed by war, pollution and human neglect, and the end was nigh. He told the members that they would have to leave before the world self-destructed, and the only way to make the journey to Sirius was through fire. Fire, although destructive, had the ability to transform and it was therefore the only medium through which to pass.
This obsession with fire may have come from Jouret’s belief in his own reincarnation from a member of the Knight’s Templar. Members of this group were known to have been burned to death at the stake by the ruling monarchy who feared the power and secrecy of the order. The spirits of these persecuted and holy men lived on, he proclaimed, in the elders of the Order of the Solar Temple.
By the end of the 1980s, membership was international and spread mainly across France, Switzerland and French Canada where Jouret had led lecture tours. There were also a few followers in the US, Spain and French Caribbean. The sect had amassed a fortune of 93 million dollars through donations and sales of property offered to it by its members.
CONCERN AND SUSPICION
But Jouret’s radical prophecies of an ecological apocalypse caused concern and suspicion amongst the group and membership began to dwindle. Rumours also crept in that the Order was a hoax and that the members had been swindled out of their savings and possessions.
Perhaps under pressure from these accusations and the creeping group discontent, Di Mambro was fast losing patience with his partner too. He was aware of the commune’s displeasure at the controlling way in which Jouret conducted his lessons and preachings. Despite his magnetism and inspirational style, Jouret had previously been voted out of another group, ‘The Renewed Order of the Temple’, as Grand Master by his followers. This displayed a severe lack of confidence, and Di Mambro feared that the same could happen within the Solar Temple.
The disillusion spread amongst the group, when a couple of members left and began to denounce the group in Quebec. They claimed that the Order was dangerous, demanded their money back and encouraged others to do the same. They did, and Di Mambro was faced with numerous lawsuits and financial demands.
Di Mambro was also coming under scrutiny from the banks and financial institutions who were beginning investigations, suspicious of money-laundering, into the vast sums of cash which he’d been investing in his accounts. His health was also suffering. He was diagnosed with diabetes and kidney failure, and believed that he had also developed cancer.
Neither were his family supportive. His daughter, whom he had heralded as one of the ‘cosmic children’, no longer wanted to be involved in her father’s premonition of the New Age and instead wanted to be with the other children of her own age, doing the things they were doing. His son condemned him as a fraud, which led to many more of the Order’s followers demanding their money back.
The police also became involved when, through Jouret’s association with illegal arms dealers, two members of the Quebec group were arrested for the possession of handguns with silencers. Jouret was also charged. The suicides at Waco and Jonestown did not help Di Mambro’s cause either as unorthodox groups were now regarded as dangerous and viewed in a very negative light.
With the world seemingly bearing down on Di Mambro, the only explanation he could offer his confused followers was that the end of the world was nearing and that this negativity was intended to encourage them to seek out a better life, and to push them towards their salvation. They had to depart together. Consequently Di Mambro and Jouret began to expedite their plans to take their followers to Sirius.
VITAL EVIDENCE
In the aftermath and investigation into the Swiss and Canadian suicide fires, letters were offered to the police from relatives of those who had died, written in advance of the events, and as a means of explanation for what was to come. They told of how some ‘traitors’ would have to be executed, but that mostly they were going to carry out the killings as a way of helping the members of the group who were not strong enough to make the journey themselves. Those who were prepared to kill themselves were the more spiritually developed and superior. They believed that they would transcend to a higher spiritual level by taking their own lives and those of others, and would reach a state which they could not achieve on earth. Earth, they claimed, was heading for destruction anyway and soon no one would live there at all.
These notes however, albeit written before the events, were mailed afterwards. Therefore some of the members of the Order of the Solar Temple were still alive.
