Order of the Solar Temple

Since 1975, a Geneva-based community known as the Brotherhood of the Pyramid (French: Fraternité de la pyramide) began meeting regularly in a house in the Geneva countryside, for community, discussion and mutual support on topics such as diet and spirituality.[8] Orchestral conductor Michel Tabachnik attended, enjoyed the atmosphere, and became a member.[9] In 1977, he met Joseph Di Mambro, who suggested he take over the community and structure it. The following year, the two men created the Golden Way Foundation, of which Tabachnik became president.[10][11]

Based in a villa in Saconnex-d'Arve, Switzerland, the Golden Way Foundation (French: Fondation Golden Way) aimed to discuss issues of pollution, the environment and social ties. It aimed to develop knowledge about the evolution of future quality of life, such as healthy living, organic farming and alternative healthcare techniques.[8] Through conferences (with guests such as Iannis Xenakis, Alexis Weissenberg, Nikita Magaloff, Hubert Reeves and Michel Jonasz), research and television interviews, the foundation opened up to public and political life.[9] In the early 1980s, Joseph Di Mambro and Michel Tabachnik, both interested in philosophy, esotericism and spirituality, decided to bring a mystical and religious vision to the foundation. A room called the "Sanctuary" was set aside for meditation and rituals designed to "connect with the world of the invisible". Members wore white capes with symbols such as the Rose cross and the Templar cross.[9] Michel Tabachnik held several conferences on esotericism. Di Mambro also set up the Amenta society to disseminate the ideologies of the Golden Way Foundation and recruit new members.[7] Joseph Di Mambro was perceived by Foundation members as a medium, a "walk-in" being (a being who takes on the body of another).[9]

In 1982, Di Mambro announced that a "great mission" awaited the foundation. He also announced that a "child-king" was to be born into the community.[9] Di Mambro soon had the idea that Dominique Bellaton, a young drug-addicted woman who had been hunted by pimps who joined the order at her parents' request, was the surrogate mother of the "cosmic child". A ceremony in the order's crypt, organized with special effects, helped to confirm to the members the supernatural powers of "theogamic conception" without sexual intercourse, when in fact Dominique was Di Mambro's mistress and had been pregnant for several weeks.[12] Their child, Emmanuelle (also given the cosmic name Chris, as a Christ-bearer), was born on March 22, 1982.

In 1981, Camille Pilet suffered a heart attack and met Belgian homeopath Luc Jouret. In the wake of Camille Pilet's situation, Jouret began to take an interest in alternative medicine and therapies such as macrobiotics and iridology, and developed an interest in esotericism.[7][lower-alpha 1] In 1982, he founded Club Amenta (later renamed Atlanta).[13] He subsequently gave a number of lectures in which he defended the existence of a link between a spiritual approach and homeopathy. Having noticed Luc Jouret's good elocution and communication skills, Di Mambro decided to meet him.[9] At the same time, Di Mambro became involved with the Renovated Order of the Temple (French: Ordre rénové du Temple, ORT), a revival of the Ordo Templi Orientis that had been created by former Rosicrucians in 1968. In 1983, after the death of Julien Origas, leader of the ORT, Di Mambro urged Jouret to take over the order, and he became its new Grand Master the same year, before he was expelled by Origas's daughter.[14] Luc Jouret's appointment immediately triggered a split within the Renovated Order of the Temple, giving rise to the International Chivalric Order of the Solar Tradition (French: ordre international chevaleresque de Tradition solaire, OICTS), of which he became head.[15]

In 1984, the Golden Way Foundation and the International Chivalric Order of the Solar Tradition merged to form the Order of the Solar Temple (French: ordre du Temple solaire, OTS), combining various principles of the previous structures and bringing together several members from French-speaking countries. Luc Jouret was the lecturer and recruiter, and became the Grand Master, although the organization's true head and master of finance was Di Mambro.[16]^: 276

The organization often changed its inspiration, but was mainly inspired by esotericism and occultism, due to its belief in the existence and effectiveness of practices that are not recognized by religions or science, and which required special initiation.[7] The group's stated aims were:[17]

• To recognize and bring together a spiritual elite in order to prepare it, through the study of the High Sciences, to participate in work aimed at perpetuating the ONE Consciousness and LIFE in time and space.
• To take a leading and active role in building Life Centers.
• To form a worldwide chain of true brotherhood, in the service of positive forces and the unified Temple, constituted by the Order of the Solar Temple.

In 1985, Di Mambro decided to set up a survival center in Canada in the event of nuclear war. An estate, named Sacré-Coeur, was purchased in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade, Quebec, to create an organic farm.[18] The organization set up several subsidiaries, both official and hidden, to finance these real estate purchases. More often than not, Di Mambro made a profit by reselling its stakes in the various real estate projects to sect members:[7] Joseph Di Mambro, Luc Jouret, Dominique Bellaton and Camille Pilet bought four semi-detached chalets on Chemin Belisle in Morin-Heights, Quebec and, with members' money, several other houses for OTS activities (including a farm in Cheiry, Canton of Fribourg) managed by member Albert Giacobino).

The same year, Di Mambro asked Tabachnik to draw up a series of writings to inspire him to rise in ranks within the order, called "Les Archées".[9] These, 21 in number, were written by Michel Tabachnik using the esoteric library inherited from his father, and borrowings from esotericists Raymond Bernard (founder of the Rosicrucian order AMORC), Carl Jung and Jacques Breyer, who inspired references to the Knights Templar and gave a number of lectures at the OTS.[19] These writings, not easily understood by members, were then explained by several lectures Tabachnik gave around the world.

As early as 1986, OTS member Antonio Dutoit spoke of the leaders' megalomania, deceit and embezzlement. He denounced the behavior of Joseph Di Mambro, who was leading a lifestyle contrary to his teachings. He also accused the chiefs of staging magic tricks during ceremonies. Later, Di Mambro's son, Elie, revealed his father's shady financial dealings. In the light of this information, some members and several donors (including dignitaries, industrialists and landlords) demanded partial reimbursement of the funds they had committed, even though this money was diverted to invest in fictitious companies, owned by or for the founders, who often used the money for personal luxuries.[20][21] Joseph Di Mambro promised to return the sums requested, but several OTS members resigned in quick succession. The villa in Saconnex-d'Arve was sold and Di Mambro kept only the most devoted members, who were very close to him. The other members were no longer trully aware of OTS meetings and events.[7]

In the 1990s, Luc Jouret, having given up his profession as a homeopath to devote himself fully to the OTS, began lecturing on personal development at various companies, universities and banks, mainly in Quebec but also in Switzerland, France and Belgium. Di Mambro, who had a dim view of these lectures as "disseminating the ideas and principles of the OTS to the public", began sabotaging Jouret's lectures, who eventually abandoned his activities and became totally dependent on Di Mambro.[22] Jouret was removed from his position as Grand Master, which was handed over to Robert Falardeau. Back in Europe, Di Mambro, Camille Pilet and Alexandre Borgeaud bought land in Salvan (Valais) and built three chalets (Luc Jouret lived in Di Mambro's chalet).[22]

Joseph Di Mambro, faced with increasing criticism from members, decided to modify his teachings and preach a transit to another planet. In the spring of 1994, he summoned all OTS members and followers, and explained that the Temple's mission was coming to an end and that OTS leaders would disappear on the star Sirius. The remaining members would have to take up the torch.[7] The leaders began to monitor members who said they wanted to leave the OTS. Some were spied on, others had their phones tapped.

On September 30, 1994, Dominique Bellaton lured the couple Antonio Dutoit and Suzanne Robinson, along with their 2-month-old baby Christopher-Emmanuel, to Di Mambro's chalet at 199 chemin Belisle in Morin-Heights. Di Mambro ordered the murder, regarding the baby as the Antichrist, because his own daughter (who he believed had divine powers) was named Emmanuelle and he had not been consulted in the naming of the infant, and had to be eliminated by two knights of the sect, Jerry Genoud and Joël Egger, to prevent his reappearance. He believed that the Antichrist was born into the order to prevent Di Mambro from succeeding in his spiritual aim.[28][29] The baby was stabbed through the heart with a wooden stake, and the parents, ex-members, were then murdered.[30]^: 1 Bellaton and Egger left for Switzerland at 10.10pm on September 30,[31] while Genoud and his wife Colette cleaned up, set fire to the chalet and killed themselves.[7]

On the night of October 4 to 5, 1994, two fires broke out in Switzerland: one at around 11:55 p.m. at the "La Rochette" farm in Cheiry, and another in three chalets at "Le Fond du Ban" in Salvan. When the fire department arrived, they found 23 people dead in Cheiry and 25 in Salvan. The victims were, in most cases, "dressed in a white, black or gold ritual cloak, depending on the degree of initiation reached".[32] In Switzerland, many of the victims were found in a secret underground chapel lined with mirrors[33] and other items of Templar symbolism.[34] Jouret was among the dead in Salvan. Many bodies were burned beyond recognition, and Jouret and Di Mambro's bodies had to be identified via dental records.[35] Di Mambro, in addition to his wife and child, were also among the dead.[36]

In Cheiry, twenty victims died from one or more bullets to the head, two suffocated with plastic bags around their heads, and another probably in the same way on October 3. Twenty-two people had flunitrazepam in their blood, and one had theobromine. The building, closed from the inside, was then set on fire the following day by an automatic ignition system.[7] The bodies were dressed in the order's ceremonial robes and were in a circle, feet together, heads outward, most with plastic bags tied over their heads; they had each been shot in the head.[9] The inner circle members, called the "awakened", ingested poison. An additional 30, "immortals", were shot or smothered; 8 others, declared as "traitors", were also murdered.[30]^: 1

The plastic bags may have been a symbol of the ecological disaster that would befall the human race after the OTS members moved on to Sirius; it's also possible that these bags were used as part of the OTS rituals, and that members would have voluntarily worn them without being placed under duress. There was also evidence that many of the victims in Switzerland were drugged before they were shot. Other victims were found in three ski chalets; several dead children were lying together.[9] The tragedy was discovered when officers rushed to the sites to fight the fires that had been ignited by remote-control devices. Farewell letters left by the believers stated that they believed they were leaving to escape the "hypocrisies and oppression of this world."[9]

In Salvan, it transpired that the victims had been injected (or had injected themselves) with a curare, opioid and benzodiazepine-based poison. The cottages were then locked from the inside and set on fire using an automatic ignition system. Bodies were found in only two of the three cottages.[7] A mayor, a journalist, a civil servant, and a sales manager were found among the dead in Switzerland. Records seized by the Quebec police showed that some members had personally donated over C$1 million to Di Mambro. All the suicides/murders and attempts occurred around the dates of the equinoxes and solstices in relation to the beliefs of the group.

On the morning of October 5, Di Mambro instructed Patrick Vuarnet (Jean Vuarnet's son), a member of the sect, to send 300 items of mail to the media, other followers and a number of political and public figures, including Charles Pasqua.[35] These various letters mainly contained messages taken from the order's beliefs.[31] It was at this point that outsiders discovered the desire to transfer to the star Sirius.

When the bodies were discovered on site by the police, it was discovered that the fires at the Cheiry farm and the Salvan chalet had been started by ignition systems. However, some of these systems had failed, leaving behind a large number of OTS documents, books and video cassettes. Thanks to these, the police were able to understand the workings of the community and recognize some of its members, including Michel Tabachnik (in concert in Denmark at the time of the massacres).[22] He was questioned for three days by the investigating judge André Piller, and was cleared of having been the perpetrator of the massacre. Other former OTS members were also questioned, such as Thierry Huguenin, who testified that he had been called to Salvan on October 4 on the promise that money owed to him would be returned that day.[lower-alpha 2] However, sensing danger, he left the scene. He went on to explain that he believed the plan was to assassinate him and the others in order to reach the number of 54 victims, in connection with the 54 knights of the Order of the Temple executed at the stake on March 18 during the reign of Philip IV of France.[31][lower-alpha 3] After the event, some other members declared their continued support for the sect's ideas, and even regretted not having been chosen for the "transit".[37]

The investigation finally concluded that Di Mambro and Luc Jouret had orchestrated mass suicide. The investigators ordered the destruction of the site "so as not to shock believers or attract the curious", a decision that was controversial.[32]

On the night of December 15 to 16, 1995, sixteen people - thirteen adults and three children aged 2, 4 and 6 - were immolated in a star-formation at a place called "Le Trou de l'Enfer", in an isolated clearing on the Vercors plateau, near Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes (Isère) in France.[37][38] On 23 December 1995, the 16 bodies were discovered.

The investigation conducted by the Grenoble Gendarmerie Nationale Research Section, which entrusted technical expertise to the Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nationale (IRCGN), determined that fourteen people had been killed by one or two bullets from a .22 Long Rifle pistol, after having been sedated, and then set alight with wood and petrol. According to the investigators' theory, the two killers were inspector Jean-Pierre Lardanchet and architect André Friedli. They each shot themselves in the head with a 9×19mm Parabellum (the weapons found near their bodies) as they threw themselves into the fireplace. The Grenoble Public Prosecutor opened an investigation into murder and criminal conspiracy, with the possibility of external complicity. One of the dead included Olympian Edith Bonlieu, who had competed in the women's downhill at the 1956 Winter Olympics.[39]

In the wake of these events, fear of cults took hold of the French and Swiss populations.[37]

On December 23, 1995, during the journal de 13 heures program on the French channel TF1, journalist Gilles Bouleau mentioned that the sect had survived and united behind Michel Tabachnik, thus indirectly declaring that Tabachnik was the mastermind behind the Vercors massacre. This information was picked up by the media, leading Tabachnik to give a public denial. It was revealed that in September 1994, Tabachnik gave two lectures in Avignon at Di Mambro's request. These lectures were preparatory sessions for the massacres that were to take place in October of the same year. It was later said that Tabachnik had indeed taken part in these conferences, but without knowing the outcome of the massacres, and that it had been a set-up by Di Mambro.

At the time of the investigation, due to the death of the two leaders in Salvan in 1994, Tabachnik was the only defendant in the case. The examining magistrate considered that Tabachnik, through his writings and his conferences, could have incited followers to commit suicide. He was therefore charged with participation in a criminal conspiracy to commit a crime.[37] In his defense, Tabachnik published Bouc émissaire. Dans le piège du Temple Solaire, with a preface by Pierre Boulez. On November 17, 1998, investigating judge Luc Fontaine presented the conclusions of his inquiry into the second Vercors massacre.

In the run-up to the criminal court trial against Michel Tabachnik, the families of the victims, all of whom believed it to be a mass suicide, filed a civil action. Having consulted the experts' files, the civil party identified a number of inconsistencies in the investigation, such as the fact that the organic environment around the bodies of the immolated victims was completely intact and showed no trace of fire. The civil party then asked for counter-expertise and questioned the theory of collective suicide.[37] According to Alain Vuarnet, son and brother of two of the victims, who has been conducting a parallel private investigation since 1995,[40] the "collective suicides" of members of the Order of the Solar Temple in December 1995 in the Vercors region have still not been fully explained. He complained about the lack of cooperation from the justice system, which has always refused to investigate the possibility of murder. According to the expert, Professor Gilbert Lavoué, commissioned by Mr. Vuarnet, phosphorus was found at the scene, indicating the use of a flamethrower, which would imply that there had been no suicide, but a staged event.[41]

According to Mr. Vuarnet, "My father and I remain convinced that it wasn't with a few damp branches that these sixteen bodies were charred to such an extent".[40] The results of the expert analyses revealed "an excess of phosphorus of between 21% and 40%";[42] and that some of the victims had plastic bags over their heads, which, according to the investigators, was explained as a ritual sign; additionally, some of the victims had been drugged.

Grenoble's former museum-library, specially fitted out for the trial between April 13 and June 25, 2001.

On April 13, 2001, at the Grenoble Museum-Library, which had been transformed for the occasion, the criminal court trial of Michel Tabachnik (defended by Francis Szpiner) for "criminal conspiracy" began. However, the plaintiffs' side split into two camps: one led by Alain Vuarnet, those who felt that the trial should not focus on Tabachnik's responsibility, but on the investigation itself, which they feel did not go all the way in their research; and on the other, led by the Union nationale des associations de défense des familles et de l'individu victimes de sectes (UNADFI), who believed that Tabachnik and his writings were the cause of the mass suicides, and that cults must be eradicated.[37]

On the seventh day of the trial, several former OTS members took the stand and testified. Among the testimonies given, some were shocked, angry at the sect and the acts committed, while others remained faithful to Di Mambro and to the transit to Sirius.[37] On the eighth day, Tabachnik was finally interviewed and told of having been manipulated and fooled by Di Mambro. On the tenth day, the prosecutor demanded 5 years' imprisonment for Tabachnik's alleged role in the conditioning of the Temple's followers.[43] On June 25, 2001, the Grenoble Criminal Court acquitted Tabachnik on the basis of the benefit of the doubt.

The public prosecutor, still accusing him of having, through his writings, pushed followers into a mass suicide, appealed against the criminal court's decision, and Tabachnik was tried again in 2006. French prosecutors appealed against the verdict and an appellate court ordered a second trial beginning 24 October 2006.[44] With this appeal, the plaintiffs, led by Alain Virante, hoped to prove that the investigation by examining magistrate Luc Fontaine had been mistaken, and that the followers had indeed been murdered. At their request, Professor Gilbert Lavoué was asked to remove any traces of phosphorus from the victims' remains, which were then dug up. The bodies were found to contain excess phosphorus. In the end, the forensic experts considered that this analysis added nothing new to the case and did not call into question Judge Fontaine's decision.[43] The public prosecutor, considering that Tabachnik was not an active member of the order and that "his responsibility for the deaths had not been established", did not request any sentence against him. He was acquitted a second time in December 2006.[45]

On March 22, 1997, five more members were found dead in Saint-Casimir, Quebec.[46] The members had taken their own lives in order to reach Sirius by "transit", before the house was set on fire by an automatic ignition system. Three teenagers, aged 13, 14 and 16, the children of one of the couples that died in the fire, were discovered in a shed behind the house, alive but heavily drugged.[47]

In Yves Boisset's documentary on the case, Bernard Geiger, an official of the Valais cantonal police, declared:[53]

Je le vois davantage comme un meurtre collectif. Je rejette formellement la thèse du suicide collectif décidé par tous – cette idée est du pur cinéma.[lower-alpha 4]

Boisset's documentary builds its argument around the question: "74 dead and no one to blame?"[54] At the 2001 trial, the courts also emphasized "the improbability of this new massacre more than a year after the disappearance of the leaders" and the investigations that confirmed "a mass murder followed by the suicide of the assassins", while establishing that, according to witnesses, most of the 1995 victims, like those in 1994, had "made the sacrifice of their lives".[31]

In addition to Alain Vuarnet, other members of the victims' families, René and Muguette Rostan and Willy and Giséla Schleimer, requested in 2001 and again in 2004 that the case be reopened to contest the theory of collective suicide.[31] Jean-Pierre Brard also requested reopening the case in 2006. Maurice Fusier, a reporter for Radio France, reiterated the same phosphorus assassination theory in 2006.[55]

Some sources, including psychiatrist Jean-Marie Abgrall, supported the idea that the affair had a political mafia origin, citing possible links between Luc Jouret and members of Gladio.[51] In 2006, filmmaker Yves Boisset also denounced the "political mafia" trail, which the investigators had allegedly overlooked. In particular, he highlighted Di Mambro's links with Jean-Louis Fargette, a Toulon "godfather" murdered in 1993. The filmmaker has made a film, Les Mystères sanglants de l'OTS, to set out his point of view.[56] He claimed he sees "the shadow of Charles Pasqua in this affair"[56][57] and spoke of "arms trafficking between Canada and Angola", which the newspaper Le Monde dubbed Angolagate, an article which makes no reference to the OTS.

Yves Boisset also claimed that Judge Piller burned evidence by destroying the chalet, the scene of the crime.[58] He also stated that Inspector Jean-Pierre Lardanchet, found dead in the Vercors, was an agent of the intelligence service and close to Charles Pasqua.[59] Lardanchet was presented by other sources as an agent of the Police de l'Air et des Frontières or as a "mole" infiltrated into the order.[60]

Several months after the affair, two journalists from France 2 visited the ruins of the Salvan chalet and found, in the kitchen garbage can, audio cassettes in excellent condition, recording telephone conversations between followers who had been spied on by Di Mambro.[61] Extracts from the tapes were broadcast and deemed to be in line with the order's beliefs and theses.[62]

Boisset's investigation led him to find a link with the Yann Piat affair (former deputy for the National Front from 1986 to 1988, then deputy for the 3rd Var constituency under the UDF label from 1988 until her death), who had taken an interest in an OTS member's real estate project shortly before she was murdered by two motorcyclists on February 25, 1994. Arnaud Palisson, a former analyst at the Direction centrale des Renseignements généraux (DCRG) in Paris, believes that Boisset "was swept aside by the prodigiously fallacious arguments of provincial journalists looking for their Watergate in the Vercors".[63]

During the search of Joseph Di Mambro's apartment, a document was found which was attributed to Jocelyne Duplessis, Di Mambro's wife, which read:

Suite au tragique Transit de Cheiry, nous tenons à préciser, au nom de la Rose + Croix, que nous déplorons et nous nous désolidarisons totalement du comportement barbare, incompétent et aberrant du docteur Luc Jouret. Prenant la décision d’agir de sa propre Autorité, à l'encontre de toutes nos règles, il a transgressé notre code d'honneur et est la cause d'un véritable carnage qui aurait dû être un Transit effectué dans l'Honneur, la Paix et la Lumière. Ce départ ne correspond pas à l'Éthique que nous représentons et défendons face à la postérité.[lower-alpha 5]