30 years ago, the bodies of 23 people were found on a farm in Switzerland.
The investigators note that they are members of the Order of the Solar Temple.
A sect which, after having prospered for ten years, will come to a dramatic end.
The fall of one of the greatest sects of our time. 30 years ago today, on Tuesday October 4, firefighters were called to a fire on a farm in Cheiry, in the Swiss canton of Fribourg. They will then make a macabre discovery which will quickly hit the headlines: the bodies of 22 people, belonging to the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS), are charred. A case that left its mark and is told in a documentary series to be discovered on TF1+.
When emergency services arrived at the La Rochette farm, they had difficulty entering the farm, the exits of which were locked. They notice that a firing system has been installed in different places on the farm. They discovered a lifeless man upstairs, his head in a plastic bag, and in other rooms the bodies of 22 people. Collective suicide? Massacre? The police are wondering. This is only the beginning: a few hours later, in Granges-sur-Salvan, a town located 110 km from Cheiry, firefighters intervened on another fire, that of a chalet in which they discovered 25 bodies. The vast majority of them were riddled with bullets and covered in plastic bags.
Total allegiance
In both cases, the majority of victims wear symbolic capes or dresses and they have absorbed a substance, flunitrazepam, a powerful hypnotic product capable of causing sleep or fainting. The investigation quickly focuses on the OTS: the latter, created in 1984, descends from the renovated Order of the Temple (ORT) and claims, by adapting them to today’s world, the practices of the Order of the Templars, including the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, died at the stake in 1312, on the orders of Philippe le Bel.
The founder and grand master of the OTS, Julien Origas, died in 1981. He was replaced by Luc Jouret, 46, a homeopathic doctor in Annemasse (Haute-Savoie), who died during the collective tragedy of 1994. The members of the ‘OTS are bound by absolute secrecy, the statutes of the sect stipulating that “the decision is reserved exclusively for the Grand Master, who is free to take the one that seems most appropriate to him, and everyone must hasten to submit to it“. The recruitment of members begins with a medico-spiritual approach, continues with doctrinal and stimulating touches (progressive initiation, pride in belonging to an elitist circle, etc.) and ends with total allegiance.
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Order of the Solar Temple: from the rise to the fall of one of the greatest sects of our time
Testament letters posted in Geneva the day before the carnage then confirmed the double collective suicide, but Swiss justice subsequently estimated that there had been more than two thirds of assassinations. An arrest warrant was issued against Luc Jouret and another leader of the sect, Joseph Di Mambro, 70, but their bodies were later identified among those of the victims.
On Christmas Eve 1995, a mass grave of OTS members was discovered in the Vercors massif: 16 charred corpses, including those of three children and the wife and son, Patrick, of ski champion Jean Vuarnet, Most of them were arranged in a star shape in a macabre display. History will repeat itself one last time: in 1997 in Canada, with the death of five followers.