On October 5, 1994, 25 members of the esoteric sect of the Order of the Solar Temple died poisoned and burned in Salvan (VS), 23 suffocated or riddled with bullets in Cheiry (FR) and 5 others in Quebec. The scale of the tragedy had a lasting impact.
On the night of October 4 to 5, 1994, shortly before dawn, 23 bodies were discovered in a burning farm in the village of Cheiry, in the Broye district. The bodies are wrapped in ceremonial clothes. Around the same time, a burning chalet in Salvan, near Martigny (VS), left 25 corpses.
The scale of the tragedy strikes people’s minds; most people old enough to have experienced it still remember it today. The police officers and investigating judges immediately feel that they are faced with an extraordinary case, an intuition quickly confirmed just by the media hype observed over the hours.
>> The 7:30 p.m. found some of the first speakers:
The next day, Canadian authorities announced the discovery of five charred bodies in a chalet in Morin Heights, a village located an hour’s drive from Montreal.
This “trip” which took away, willingly or by force, 53 people in total does not remain without consequences. In December 1995, sixteen charred bodies were found in Vercors, France. And in March 1997, five other corpses, also charred, were discovered in Canada. All are linked to the sect.
>> Discover the RTS podcast “Soleil noir”, an autopsy of the OTS sect: The Black Sun podcast, an autopsy of the Order of the Solar Temple sect
>> The first episode of the series, dedicated to the massacres which brought the OTS to light:
>> The page bringing together all podcast episodes
Bullet holes
The investigation quickly puts a name to the common denominator of the killing: the Order of the Solar Temple, an apocalyptic sect whose members seem to have voluntarily killed themselves to reach another dimension. [lire encadré]. We will know a little later that the two founders of the sect, Luc Jouret and Joseph “Jo” di Mambro, died with their followers.
But the questions remain. In Salvan, the victims took drugs derived from curare and the bodies showed no trace of violence. In Cheiry, on the other hand, 20 of the 23 victims had bullet holes, almost all to the head. They were alive when the first shot was fired. Some of the bullets were fired from a pistol found in Salvan.
>> See also the documentary series “La Fraternité” released in 2023 and dedicated to the OTS drama: The “Brotherhood” series offers a “fresh look” at the horror of the Order of the Solar Temple
No memorial
In Salvan, as in Cheiry, there is no trace of the tragedy left today. The chalet and farm which served as the setting for the killing were razed and made way for new construction. Nothing reminds us of the tragic events.
“No one talks about it in the village anymore,” explained the president of Salvan in 2014, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the tragedy. The page has been turned, even if the questions remain: those of the victims’ parents and loved ones, who have searched for a long time for answers to what happened. In total, all collective suicides caused the deaths of 74 people in Switzerland, France and Canada, in barely two and a half years.
On the judicial level, on the Swiss side, the case was closed on August 18, 1998 by judgment of the former Indictment Chamber of the Friborg Cantonal Court and the procedure has not been reopened since that date. In Valais, the case was closed in October 1995.
ats/vic
