On the morning of 16 December 1995, 16 members of the Order of the Solar Temple died in a mass murder-suicide in a clearing in the Vercors, near the village of Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes in Isère, France. Two members of the group, Jean-Pierre Lardanchet and André Friedli, shot and killed 14 other members, including three children, before setting the bodies on fire and killing themselves. This was done in order to facilitate a spiritual voyage to the star Sirius, a "transit", as it had been in previous mass suicides.
This was the second mass murder-suicide associated with the group, following the 1994 mass murder-suicide, which had killed 53 members of the group, including both of its leaders, Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret. Following this initial spate of deaths, the OTS was believed to be defunct, but was actually secretly continued by Christiane Bonet, a devoted member of the group. Bonet claimed that she could communicate with Jouret and Di Mambro in the afterlife as a medium, and gathered together the remaining OTS members, who would regularly meet together. In accordance with the previous writings of the OTS, she soon began to orchestrate a second "transit".
On 15 December 1995, the members all received a call from Bonet, after which they abruptly left their jobs and families and drove to an isolated clearing in the Vercors called the Well of Hell. According to the standard hypothesis, the members were then drugged, before Jean-Pierre Lardanchet and André Friedli shot and killed them, including in Lardanchet's case his own children, before setting the bodies alight. They then shot themselves. Several of those killed were likely unaware of the plans and had not consented in dying, though others had, and left notes behind declaring their intentions and desires in death. The bodies were found a week later following a missing persons investigation.
The case became a media sensation. Following the case, composer Michel Tabachnik was tried for allegedly having known of the deaths before and influenced the followers into death via his writings. He was acquitted in two trials in 2001 and 2006. The precise sequence of events is controversial, and various theories sprung up alleging outside involvement, though none have ever been substantiated. Further conspiracy theories were also propagated. The case, and the Solar Temple as a whole, inflamed the fight against cults in France.
Background 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. Many members of the group did not commit mass suicide, but were murdered in this incident. It was publicly believed that the group had disbanded, however, this was not completely true, as remnants lived on. Prior to their deaths, the group had mailed a final letter containing their message to the world. In the final testament letter, it is expressed that the departed members of the OTS would welcome any member who was "worthy" of joining them in the afterlife. An excerpt from this testament included:
This was viewed as a "call" by the remaining OTS members. According to journalist Arnaud Bédat, it functioned to comfort the remaining members, showing them that their dead friends had not abandoned them, which served to convince them of the validity of their faith in the OTS: they were just being waited for "on the other side".
Remaining members Even a month after the initial deaths, the remaining members of the Solar Temple began to meet up, centered around Christiane Bonet. Bonet was a 50-year-old Swiss psychotherapist; journalist Arnaud Bédat described her as "a fanatic", "totally committed to the OTS's ideology". Bonet had actually been a later arrival to the OTS than most of the members to die in the 1994 set of deaths, joining in 1989. One of her friends claimed that the day Bonet joined the OTS, Bonet said to her "well, I hope we haven't joined a cult." She later donated a 100,000 Swiss franc inheritance she received to the group, as well as her whole salary of 8,000 francs; she did not ask questions and did not express doubt of the order.
Bonet was involved in the first deaths, as the day prior to the "transit" she had called the employers of two members – Elie Di Mambro and Daniel Jaton, the former being her "cosmic" partner in the group – saying they were delayed, when in actuality both had already died in Switzerland. When interviewed by the Swiss police the day after the deaths, she acted "cold, distant, and contemptuous", denying she had known anything beforehand, saying the phone calls had been to "not dramatize the situation". She did however say that Jouret had called her the day prior to the deaths, but described this call as one in which Jouret had "wanted to convey a lot of joy to me". In reality, according to his phone records, Jouret had called her eight times and had twice signaled her on her pager in the days preceding the deaths. What they discussed is not known. She bemoaned the fact that she had not been selected for inclusion in this incident, expressing envy of Jaton, who she described to the police as having likely been a perpetrator of the 1994 deaths.
Another remaining member was André Friedli. A Swiss architect, 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. Lardanchet was heavily in debt, described as "dull, very withdrawn", while Rostan was described as "shy" and "fragile". At his request, Lardanchet had been transferred to Annemasse, which may have been in an effort to get closer to the OTS in Switzerland. Both men had been in Switzerland during the first deaths, likely the people inside the car that had escaped from the Cheiry farm the day prior; Lardanchet was afraid that he was going to be prosecuted as the perpetrator of the Swiss killings. Both men were called as witnesses in the trials in early 1995. While being investigated, Lardanchet claimed that he was not an OTS member. As no charges were ever filed he was allowed to continue his job. Also among the continued members were Édith and Patrick Vuarnet, wife and son of gold medal Olympic skier Jean Vuarnet, Édith being an Olympian in her own right. Patrick Vuarnet had been the person to distribute the original Testament letters for the 1994 suicides, after which he was questioned but not charged with any crime; he expressed to his brother that he felt guilty that he had not been in the first "transit".
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. Four members of these sessions would not die in the 1995 incident; according to these survivors, the new OTS had no structure and no individual leader. In these sessions, members meditated, though there was no strict practice. Sessions conducted in this second iteration were similar to those held by Di Mambro prior to the founding of the OTS. They also discussed their dreams, and messages received "from the beyond" by members. One of these messages told the members that they would not be left to "live through a third world war", and that instead someone would come and get them prior. Messages were generally vague.
These survivors claimed that the remaining members did not discuss transiting, but that many remaining members had dreams about those who had died and that "certain things" they were not responsible for. However, by the spring of 1995, a "transit" was possibly already being planned, with the members looking for an ideal place to conduct it. A month after the first incident, several former members were seen together in a restaurant where the 1995 deaths would eventually take place, the Vercors. The group around Bonet became more distinct, and members began to communicate to each other in a coded system through their pagers, avoiding phones except for basic things.
During this period, Bonet was contacted by her elderly mother – having heard of former member Thierry Huguenin's book Le 54e discussing his time in the OTS, she wrote to Bonet expressing her concern. She worried that she would "find out about [Bonet's] departure on television", attempting to reason with her. Bonet wrote back, ignoring her concerns, and said that Huguenin (referred to as "the unspeakable") would "know what justice is reserved for him". In this letter, she said: