1995 Vercors massacre

The Order of the Solar Temple was a religious group active in several French-speaking countries, led by Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret. Founded in 1984, it was a neo-Templar secret society with eclectic beliefs sourced from many different movements like Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and the New Age. They conceptualized the transit, or mass ritual suicide, as a ritual involving magic fire, where they would undergo a spiritual voyage to the star Sirius. In the first 1994 "transit", 53 members of the OTS died in Switzerland and Canada, including both Di Mambro and Jouret. It was publicly believed that the group had disbanded, however, this was not completely true, as remnants lived on. Friedli was described as a quiet and calm man. He had joined the OTS after meeting his wife, Jocelyne Friedli, who introduced him to the group. Bédat described both of them as "[t]otally under the influence of Luc Jouret". They both lived on the OTS's Sacred Heart commune in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade in Canada. After moving to Canada, Jocelyne lost her attraction to André. Jouret's remedy to this was through the OTS practice of "cosmic" coupling, and switched the pairings with another couple. Jocelyne was paired up with Bruno Klaus (later dead in the 1997 transit), while André was paired with Rose-Marie Klaus. Rose-Marie Klaus did not like André; she later denounced the group entirely, complaining about them to the media. Following the 1994 set of deaths, Friedli reconciled with his wife, and they returned to Switzerland. Jean-Pierre Lardanchet and Patrick Rostan were both French policemen; Lardanchet had drawn his friend Rostan into the OTS in the first place after they met in 1990, where Di Mambro considered them both the group's "armed eye". On the police force, Lardanchet was known for his non-violent approach, often refusing to take his service weapon. Other remaining devoted members included the Dutch executive assistant Emmy Anderson and Mercedes Faucon. Faucon was a French retired teacher, an early follower who had done cleaning labor within the group. Di Mambro, attempting to appease her for having this lowly role, would often tell her that those members who were "last here" would be "the first in the afterlife". When she was interrogated by the French police, she claimed that she had actually left the OTS two years before the deaths, but she was evasive in answering the questions and not believed by investigators. Only a few days after the 1994 incident, she gave power of attorney over her banking account to a friend (also a member of the OTS). Anderson was a Dutch executive assistant. Unusually for the OTS, which had promiscuous sexual norms, she had never had sexual relations with anyone. To Di Mambro, she represented the "androgynous prototype that exists on Sirius". When questioned by police, she was not open with them, but declared that if she had been "called" to participate in the first set of deaths, she would have done so; she praised Di Mambro as a "cosmic being" who had been a "bearer of a very different truth". Bédat described this pair as "the diehards". == Planning ==

Following the deaths, Bonet gathered remaining members of the OTS. She convinced them that she had established contact with Jouret and Di Mambro in the afterlife, acting as a medium, which she said she had developed the abilities for following the 1994 deaths. Other members were initially skeptical of her claims, but began to believe her. About 20 former templars met in the top floor of an old building, Bonet's workplace in Geneva, every Tuesday and Friday evening. During this same time, André Friedli wrote his will. Friedli's relatives would later find in his home highly detailed maps of the Vercors. Early in December 1995, his car was spotted in the village of Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes, in what was possibly a reconnaissance mission. Weapons were obtained by Jean-Pierre Lardanchet and Patrick Rostan. Writings from the group found by Swiss police had previously warned that the next mass suicide would occur on a solstice; the 1995 winter solstice would occur on 22 December. On 12 December 1995, Bonet gathered the remaining members in her office. This gathering included most of those who would later be found dead; including among them Faucon, Anderson, and Édith and Patrick Vuarnet. It also included one couple who were not found dead in the incident. This group did not include either Lardanchet or Rostan, and was also missing Dominique Masson, a French naturopath. According to the surviving couple, nothing happened in this meeting except for an agreement to meet there again in three days. == Deaths ==

On 15 December 1995, Bonet called those who would later die one by one. Many were undergoing Christmas preparations about this time. One member informed her family that she would spend Christmas in the Vuarnet family chalet in the Alps alongside her daughter. Masson, preparing for the group meeting later, also disappeared for an event, likely with the Friedlis as her car was later found near their home. André Friedli left work early, claiming he was ill, which his coworkers thought was odd; his wife asked to leave work early after receiving a call, and was seen by her coworkers as looking worried. It is not known how many of the members knew they were going to die. Thierry Huguenin's personal theory was that only four of the members knew of the plans for death, and that the others thought the Vercors trip was instead to encounter supernatural phenomena in which they would see Di Mambro materialize, which he viewed as the only thing that would have attracted them all to one place. The future transit was intended to bring them to the star Sirius, as with the previous one. Each child had been shot once in the forehead, while the adults were killed by a point blank .22 Long Rifle blast to the head and also a bullet to the heart. Lardanchet's own children were two of those killed in the incident. • Emmy Anderson, 52 • Christiane Bonet, 50 • Mercedes Faucon, 62 • André Friedli, 39 • Jocelyne Friedli, 49 • Jean-Pierre Lardanchet, 36 • Marie-France Lardanchet, 34 • Aldwin Lardanchet, 4 • Curval Lardanchet, 2 • Enrique Massip, 46 • Dominique Masson, 43 • Patrick Rostan, 29 • Ute Verona, 34 • Tanis Verona, 6 • Édith Vuarnet, 61 • Patrick Vuarnet, 27 == Investigation ==

Two days after this, on 18 December 1995, the mother of Ute Verona, worried, went to the police, as she had not heard from either Verona or her daughter in three days. A missing person report was filed in response, and two days later Verona's employer was contacted. A colleague, who had also had OTS ties, told the police that the other followers had also disappeared. Following this the police investigation strengthened. They intended to keep the investigation a secret, but information was leaked to the Swiss newspaper Tribune de Genève which then spread to other media outlets. After this leak, on the 22nd, while watching television reports a French hunter recalled that he had seen on the 16th of December several cars registered from other places parked in Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes, along with many footprints going into the forest. He had also noticed a smell "of burnt leather or human flesh", like "death". Following this, he reported it to police. When the police arrived, these cars were found to belong to OTS members. They cordoned off the area and began to search for the missing Templars, with hundreds of police and several helicopters all participating in the search. The search was conducted in the rain, and the forest was very dense with many chasms. The morning of the 23rd, the hunter attempted to lead the police to where he had noticed the smell, and shortly before 9 a.m. the bodies were found. Shortly after the bodies were discovered, Grenoble's public prosecutor Jean-François Lorans opened a judicial investigation into "murder and criminal association". He stated that "We consider that the circumstances in which these murders were committed imply a degree of preparation, deliberation and premeditation that fall within the notion of organized crime. We are dealing with a real criminal organization." The investigation was headed by judge Luc Fontaine, the examining magistrate of Grenoble. Previously a prosecutor in Bonneville, he had only been in the position for a month. This theory was reconstructed with animal remains and was agreed to be conclusive. Tabachnik's trial in 2010|alt=Michel Tabachnik smiling Composer Michel Tabachnik was investigated following the incident; Fontaine placed him under examination on 12 June 1996 for conspiracy. Prior Swiss investigations had not established any connection between Tabachnik and the 1994 deaths. The case was sent to trial in 2001. On 25 June, the court acquitted Tabachnik, on the basis that there had been no significant or conclusive proof uncovered that Tabachnik had orchestrated the killings, and his writings accused of influencing the members into suicide were deemed unlikely to have influenced the members. The case was appealed, and after several delays there was a second trial held in 2006. The appeals court upheld the lower court's ruling, and he was acquitted a second time in December 2006. Tabachnik continues to deny any involvement in the planning of the deaths. == Aftermath ==

The case became headline news in France. As both leaders of the OTS had died in the original incident, that the incident had occurred provoked a significant response; due to the deaths of both leaders it had been unimaginable to investigators that the deaths would continue. The mayor of Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes expressed his shock, stating "[w]e can't understand why our little village was chosen for this tragedy". He theorized that the OTS members may have been trying to find the Well of Hell. The head of police in Geneva stated that he was surprised that the first investigation had not "opened the cult members' eyes" and that it was "a colossal waste." In the aftermath, officials of the French government and the Canadian hydroelectric utility Hydro-Québec expressed their concern that the OTS had possibly infiltrated government agencies. France formed a government watchdog designed to fight cults; a child was removed from her mother's custody temporarily, due to her past affiliation with the OTS. A spokesman for the Quebec cult-watching organization Info-Secte warned that the group continued to secretly operate, while former member Hermann Delorme said another transit might occur on the summer solstice of 1996. This did not happen. André Piller, the judge who had presided over the investigation into the Swiss case, was the subject of attention following the second incident. The French media criticized what they perceived as the "levity" of the Swiss justice system in dealing with the case; questioned over whether the second case was preventable, he said that "[n]othing, absolutely nothing, suggested that anyone would take up the torch and organize such a tragedy". This was disputed by Huguenin, who had previously alerted the police. Piller argued they had been investigating those killed in the first set of deaths, saying that many of those killed had been wiretapped or interrogated for many hours, and that nothing they had seen gave any concrete sign of a new one; he said that Huguenin had not been able to give them any solid clues. At the same time the Geneva chief of police stated the opposite, claiming that they had no right to monitor anyone and that they had not monitored anyone in the Solar Temple. In a radio interview several months later, Piller stated that he had not had any responsibility in the deaths. == Legacy ==

Two years later, five more members of the OTS died in a mass suicide in Quebec. The OTS case was noted as intensifying the French effort against cults. The role of French police officers in the case lead some to believe that they were a sign of infiltration or outside manipulation of the OTS. Many victim's families also believe in external involvement. Twenty years after the events, Luc Fontaine, now the president of the investigation chamber of Lyon, said he was still haunted by the case. He stated of the investigation that: "I sometimes think: shouldn't we have gone deeper into this aspect, or tried to emphasize another? But in this case, each door was followed by a corridor leading to 60 other doors! And the more doors we opened, the further we got from the heart of the case. An examining magistrate is not a historian or a specialist in occult movements." Fontaine defended his investigation's ruling that there was no outside involvement, saying there was no strong evidence that this had happened. He did however acknowledge that it was not impossible. According to him, there had been two "intellectually plausible" theories, either that "the group set up and executed its project based on its esoteric ideology", or that the esotericism was a front for some other reason for the murders, but that there had been no evidence for the latter. He described the victim's families as having been "terribly hurt", looking for a rational explanation for the deaths where none existed. == Notes ==