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.
It was originally believed that Di Mambro and Jouret had planned these murders with no intention of taking their own lives, but instead lying low and then emerging when the dust had settled to spend the money their followers had donated to their cause. It was therefore surprising when their bodies were discovered amongst the dead in Switzerland. They died separately, Jouret first at Chiery, and Di Mambro afterwards at Granges-sur-Salvan. It appears that they had genuinely believed their own prophecies and predictions.
DUTOIT MURDERS
The reasons for the first murder, that of the Dutoit couple and their son in Quebec, soon became known. Tony Dutoit used to help Di Mambro with one of his greatest ‘tricks’ – creating the illusion of conjuring up the elders of the Order to materialise before the assembled followers in their communal enlightenment rituals. This was all achieved with the use of lasers, and it was not long before Dutoit became disillusioned with this fraudulent practice and the false claims which Di Mambro was making. He disclosed the secret of this ‘phenomenon’ to other members of the group and then tried to claim back some of the money which he’d donated to the Order. Nicki Dutoit, Tony’s wife, also displeased Di Mambro by becoming pregnant. Di Mambro had forbidden this as he did not want any children to threaten his daughter’s prophesised place as the new messiah. They therefore left for Quebec, where they had their son. Di Mambro heard of the birth of their baby, and declared him to be the anti-Christ. The child, and their parents who were clearly trying to stand in the way of spiritual progression with their disobedience, had to be disposed of.
With the damage Dutoit did in exposing Di Mambro and having the audacity to defect, it was clear to see why he became Di Mambro’s first victim.
GRENOBLE, FRANCE
One year passed without incident before another mass suicide was committed. This time, 16 people were found dead near Grenoble in France. Not all of them had departed willingly it seemed, as one woman had suffered a broken jaw, indicating a struggle. Fourteen of the bodies, lay together in the same circular arrangement as the bodies in Switzerland, but two bodies lay separately. These, it is believed, were the bodies of two people whose responsibility it had been to shoot the weak and to start the fire. All the deceased had been members of the Solar Temple, and the incident was therefore immediately linked to the preceding three mass suicides.
But the families of the victims of Grenoble were not satisfied that the perpetrators had all died. They believed that some of the group were still at large.
Police monitored the behaviour of the remaining members of the group carefully the following year, especially during the solstice and equinox seasons, but nothing aroused their suspicion, and there were no reported fires or suicides. They believed that the practice of the Solar Temple had finally come to an end.