The Order of the Solar Temple by Lewis James R

Author:Lewis, James R.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Published: 2006-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Crises of Charismatic Authority and Millenarian Violence: The Case of the Order of the Solar Temple

John Walliss

Introduction

In the early hours of 5 October 1994, police were called to investigate a fire in a farmhouse on the outskirts of the small village of Cheiry, Switzerland, inside which firefighters had discovered the body of a man lying on a bed. The man, Albert Giacobino, had apparently been shot and then had a plastic bag placed over his head. Searching outside, the police discovered a removable wall in a garage that led to a room which had been converted into a makeshift temple. This, they found, contained a further 18 bodies, dressed in ceremonial robes and arranged in a circle like spokes on a wheel, heads facing outwards. Like Giacobino, most had plastic bags over their heads and most had been shot. Close by, in a mirrored, octagonal chamber and in a small room they discovered a further four bodies. Everywhere they looked, the police found canisters of propane gas and bags of petrol linked up to detonation devices which, for technical reasons, had not gone off.

While the police were making their grim discovery at Cheiry, similar fires erupted 60 km away at Les Granges-sur-Salvan in three holiday chalets belonging to Camille Pilet, a retired sales director of the Piaget watch company, and Luc Jouret and Joseph Di Mambro, both of whom were leaders of an occult group, l’Ordre du Temple Solaire (The Order of the Solar Temple, or OTS). Inside two of the chalets police found 25 charred bodies along with the remains of explosive devices similar to those found at Cheiry and a pistol which, it was later determined, had been used to kill the 23 Cheiry victims. Outside, a further link between the two events was discovered: a car registered to Joel Egger, a resident of the Cheiry farmhouse.

These incidents were quickly linked with another fire that had occurred approximately 6,000 miles away in Quebec, Canada. Here, on the morning of 4 October, only hours before the Swiss deaths, fires had engulfed a condominium complex owned by Pilet, Jouret, Di Mambro, and a woman called Dominique Bellaton. During their subsequent examinations, the police found the bodies of a Swiss couple, Gerry and Colette Genoud, along with those of Antonio and Nicky Robinson Dutoit and their three-month-old son, Christopher Emmanuel. Autopsies determined that although the Genouds had perished in the fire, the Dutoits had met a more violent end: Antonio Dutoit had been stabbed 50 times in the back; his wife eight times in the back, four times in the throat and once in each breast; while their son had, according to police reports, been “bled white” as a result of having being stabbed in the chest six times. These latter deaths, the police also determined, had taken place several days before the fire (Hall et al. 2000).

The deaths, however, were not to end there. Over a year later, on the winter solstice, the bodies of a further 16 Solar Temple members, including three children, were found dead in a wooded area near Grenoble, France.

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