CULTS: Death Was the Destination: The Order of the Solar Temple Pt. 2

Hi everyone, it's Vanessa Richardson. Real quick before today's episode, I want to tell you about a show I host with forensic psychologist Dr. Tristan Engels. It's called serial killers and murderous minds. Every Monday and Thursday, we take you deep into the psychology of the most chilling murderers and uncover what drives them to kill. Follow serial killers and murderous minds, available wherever you listen to podcasts. This is Crime House. We are back with part two of the order of the solar temple. Two men built a cult that convinced hundreds of people all over the world that they were chosen, that they had lived past lives and that their soulmates had been cosmically assigned to them. It was an elaborate, expensive, and very convincing illusion, mirrored rooms, golden capes, ceremonies with visits from spirits, but when the leader's own son threatened to expose the truth, that all of it was fake, Joseph Demombro wouldn't let that happen. He decided that if he wasn't going to get what he wanted, nobody could. Welcome to crimes of cults. I'm Sabrina Deanna Rogan. I'm Karin Vien. In this season, we are diving into some of the world's most dangerous cults and the charismatic leaders who promised salvation, but instead led their followers to ruin. We're going to ask the chilling question of when does belief become control and how can you tell the difference between faith and manipulation, between hope and fear? Subscribe now and step inside the world of crimes of. If you're loving crimes of, please follow rate and review us wherever you listen. It helps us build the community and we love hearing from you. To get access early and ad-free, subscribe to the Crime House+ community on Apple Podcasts. You can also catch us on YouTube or include visuals that bring every case to life. Before we get any further, this episode contains discussion of mass suicide, mass murder, and tragically the deaths of children, so please listen with care. Part two of the order of the solar temple starts now. If you're just joining us, welcome. Welcome. Sure. But we do highly suggest going back to listen to part one before listening to this episode because what we are going to share this week will hit a whole lot harder when you have the whole context of the full story. But either way, we'll give you a quick recap of part one. So last episode, we introduced you to two men, Joseph Demombro, a conman or snake-wale salesman as I like to call him, and self-proclaimed Mystic, who spent decades trying to build something big enough to match his ego. And Luke Sharay, a man who tried out many different careers, lost everything and was desperate to find purpose again, and the two men found each other for better, but really for worse. Together they built the order of the solar temple. A cult that at its peak had 442 members across four countries, all of whom genuinely believed that they were chosen. There were elaborate ceremonies, mirrored rooms, golden caves, apparitions that materialized out of thin air, it was captivating and dazzling, but in truth, it was all an elaborate hoax. And finally, someone decided to look behind the curtain. That someone was Joseph's very own son, Ellie. It was a very wizard of all's moment. The man behind the curtain was a fraud. Yeah. And a predator. And unfortunately, instead of clicking his seals three times to go home quietly, he did something way worse, or I'll say many things way worse, all of which we are about to tell you. Hooray. Yay. Sadly. So, where we left off, Ellie, Joseph's son, who had left this cult a year prior, decides to go back because he's like, "I need to stop my dad, I need everyone to know that this is a hoax, this is bullshit," which makes me wonder, like he must have known something bad was coming, and he had to go back to try to get people to leave, like it wasn't enough for him to just save himself. He wanted to save everyone else. And I wonder if some of the time away was spent like being like, "Well, what can I do to prove?" I know. To people. It's hard because you can literally show them everything is smoke and mirrors, and some people will still say, "Which is exactly what happens." What is there? So he's deciding that the way he's going to show everyone that the whole thing is BS and that they've all been tricked, is to go find all of the things that were used to basically like show them the lasers, the stage, the like backstage trickery. He even goes to Tony De Tois, who was the man that built the whole stage operatus and pretended to be that mystical figure, that apparition, who came, and confirmed that, yes, this is all fake. What everyone saw was completely fake. It was theater. And with this confirmation, Ellie and Tony start to tell everyone the truth. I appreciate the Tony's very much like, "Yeah." I'm sure there's probably more commencing, but I think Tony probably - I mean, it didn't take that much. Yeah. It doesn't sound like it happened pretty quick, but because Ellie was Joseph's son and had been portrayed as a chosen one over the years, people actually did listen to Ellie. Well, at first. Yeah. Well, what I heard was too that like, it wasn't like, let's get everyone in one room and let me show them. It was like kind of one-on-one, let me tell people, which I don't know, which is a better solution. But I feel like the one-on-one is where you start like the slow crack. Yeah. Yeah. If you go in a room full of people, it's easier to like be ignored. They're like, "Oh, God. What's happening to Ellie? Something like he's ill." Yeah. Something's happened to him in the year that he's been gone. Yeah. So I feel like that was the smart move. So he's going around telling everyone, Ellie and Tony are sharing details of the hoax, how it happened, the lasers, the sliders, the lights, the sound effects, all this to create this miraculous apparition that was really Tony, which I really think about, when I was thinking about this, Tony could have had this amazing career in like stage magic, you know? Like, he could have been in my gestion. And it makes me so sad that like he got wrapped up in this, especially his ending is so tragic. We said that there were going to be a lot of deaths. Yeah. So remember that. Okay. So between the two of them, Ellie and Tony, they're telling everybody what's happening and the truth spreads and kind of quickly, but quietly, yeah. And members start to leave, at least 15 people walked out, some demanded to get their money back, others just disappeared back to their normal lives. And then to drive the point home, Tony himself was like, I'm out and he left the order. Which as you can imagine, Joseph was not happy because Tony was also like the man behind the curtain that he couldn't pull off a lot of this stuff without Tony. And also he's upset because he had spent so much of his life building this mythology. And now people are leaving in like hordes. He's just not willing to accept this defeat. So Joseph does what he has done many a times in this cult. He spins the story. So Joseph DeMombo calls a meeting. He adorns his gold cape and stands before his cult members in the ceremonial room, the same room that he'd been using to trick people for years. And he's like, hey, everyone, I know even hearing the rumors, yeah, it's all true. It was an illusion. And but hey, hey, but but it was actually all a test. The test was a very deliberate, constructed thing to see who among you was spiritually evolved enough to see past the physical tricks and recognize the deeper truth underneath it. So only the true believers could see the true wisdom, which like, look, what the fuck? But also he's a cult leader, of course he is right. Right. Yeah. And disturbingly it worked. For a lot of people. It's so disturbing. Okay. I'll stay. That makes total sense. And keep in mind by this point, the people in the order of the solar temple had given all of their savings and restructure their entire lives, their identities, all it was so integrated in this belief system that it kind of was hard and intimidating to walk away. And it was just easier to stay for a lot of people. I also feel like this is something that happens a lot of the cults we've talked about this season where they start to get outed and they're like, oh, it was a test. And then, yes, some people do leave, but it actually leaves behind. It's like another weeding out of the people who are less loyal. So you now, you have like the hyper loyal people left behind. That's when it gets really dangerous. There was, however, one very notable person who we talked about in part one who was not buying it. And if you remember the name, Camille Pile, who was the watch executive, who was told that he was Joseph of Armitia, basically the one who had to give up everything. He gave all his money to the order. But he now, when all this is coming out, he's like, you know what, I'm actually not willing to be the one who gives my tomb to Jesus anymore. And he's like, I'm not going to give any more money to the organization. But again, Joseph Demambrow is not so happy about that because he's literally the reason they're able to afford continuing to run as this organization. So they need Camille. And when I was looking at how much money he was giving me, it was like, we're talking millions of Swiss banks. Millions. Which is so crazy. Yeah. From the watch business? I mean, the switch, the Swiss watch, the Swiss watch business, yeah. And also, like, when they first decided to move to Geneva, the only thing I could think of was like, was Geneva as expensive as it is today, back in the 70s? How, when they're like, it's struggling financially, do they just decide, good, good. question or Luke to just go to Geneva. I do not know. But okay, so when Camille is like, I'm not going to give you any money anymore. What does Joseph do? He's like, I am going to blackmail you. So this is where we're going to get into the complicated backstory. And some of this is hearsay. Some of it is like pieced together by people. But what we do know is that Camille actually met Luke Jaree before Luke ever even joined forces with Joseph. They met in 1981. So just one year before Luke and Joseph met. And Camille suffered a heart attack and the doctor that treated him was none other than Luke Jaree. Naturally, he felt indebted to Luke. And so when Luke started the order of the solar temple, Camille was more than happy to join and bankrupt the organization. And this is where it's like uncertain, but it's believed that around or by 1990, Camille and Luke's relationship became more than just platonic. To be clear, we don't have all the details and it's a very nuanced picture. But it is believed that Camille and Luke were in a sexual and romantic relationship. And there is record of Camille telling his mistress that he had for over 25 years that he could no longer be in a sexual relationship with her because he wanted to focus on his spiritual journey with Luke. To me, it makes total sense because I can't wrap my mind around someone without something else happening, giving away millions of dollars just because a doctor helped you. Yeah, like if it wasn't him, another doctor would have helped you. And it does sound like Luke was kind of the abusive relationship situation where it's like make someone fall in love with you. And granted, it's also complicated, but like apparently Luke would treat Camille really, really terribly in public, like kind of unnecessarily. Yeah. So it's messy. But there were enough implications and rumors that Joseph and others in the order believed there was a romantic relationship going on between Camille and Luke. So when Camille threatened to pull all of his funding, Joseph retaliated with his own threat, which was to publicly reveal that Camille had been having sexual relations with Luke Shurei. And in the documentary on the order by David Cohen and David Carp Brown, a surviving member named Tieri Ugonan talks about how Joseph blackmailed Camille. So it was like a known thing. Yeah. So the point being Camille didn't want it to get out and he agreed to keep funding the order after all. Yeah, he stayed in. And it is tricky because in the end, Camille was legally declared a victim. But then like in research and like scholars have described him as so fanatical, like such a loyal fanatic of the order. And there's even evidence that he helped orchestrate the final acts. Oh man. But like, they're from the beginning, too. Exactly. But then it also like, it's so messy where it's like, is he a victim or did he start as a victim and then became responsible for things similar to like nexia? Yeah, it doesn't feel clear. It's not clean. It's not. And it's also like, I mean, there's a, like I think of like the Stanford prison experiment. Like there's so many examples just like in the world of psychology and just throughout various practices and stuff, where it's like, what do people do when you push them to a certain point? Like when do they lose their own will? Yeah. And they're humanity and like the right and wrong and it's really tough. The point being they had, members of the order have very clearly lost their own will and are under Joseph and Luke's control at this point. Yeah. And Camille is getting blackmailed. But for other people who didn't have anything else to lose because they've already given everything. There was nothing to blackmail them about. Those people were choosing to leave or there were a decent amount of them. Yeah. And people started to talk about what they were experiencing or how to experience it publicly. And the right people started to listen. In 1991, French anti-cult organizations started publicly criticizing the order's harmful teachings and started to monitor their activity. Which is so crazy because like this is Luke's second time being monitored by like, I know the government. For a cult that largely operated in the shadows, this was very deeply unsettling to Joseph and Luke. This was a huge threat. Yeah. And things only got worse when in early 1993, two members of the order in Quebec were arrested after trying to illegally purchase guns, equipped with silencers, and had done so because Luke had ordered them to. Yeah. When I'm so curious what the plan was with that. I think goodness, I say thank goodness, but it still ends in tragedy. But like, I'm very curious with the plan. A couple of fewer victims. Yeah, maybe. It's almost like I wish Joseph did have those sort of powers to see like psychically like what could happen. I don't think he would, 'cause he still planned horrors. If yeah. Anyway, so those two members who per Luke's orders bought those guns got a slap on the wrist. A thousand dollar fine and unsupervised probation. But Luke's name was printed in the paper and his reputation was destroyed overnight. So now, this cult that they'd worked so hard to create is in the public eye. Authorities are watching them and the charismatic leader who can win so many, who a lot of people joined just because of him, is no longer. Yeah, like his reputation is going to be gone. Yeah, he's shamed. He's being exposed. Something is happening in Dawson Creek. A wave of violence has swept over this community of just 13,000 people. It's like the kind of stuff you only hear about on TV. 15 murders in the last five years. Some criminals, I put them into the category of super villains. I'm Timothy Sawa and from CBC's Uncover and the Fifth Estate. An investigation into deaths and disappearances in Dawson Creek and what's behind it all. I'm not saying in other words, leave me alone. The Miles Zero murders, available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. So similar to a lot of other cults that we've talked about this season, as the walls start crashing down, the leader really start to spiral, which is very, very true in Joseph's case. And on top of all of this, Joseph's body was failing him. He was almost 70 years old at this point. He had diabetes, kidney failure. And this is like hard to confirm, but he told some followers that he had cancer. Either way, he was definitely sick to some degree. And it didn't help that the rest of his life was seemingly falling apart. His cult was losing members. His co-leader was under investigation. Anti-cult activists were closing in. For my members, we're asking for their money back. Banks were growing suspicious of the large amounts of money being moved around in various accounts that were all associated with the order. Things were just not looking good for Luke, for Joseph, for the whole order in general. Yeah. And this is the moment where Joseph Demembro made one of the most consequential decisions of his life and many other lives. Instead of walking away, he reframed the ending entirely. On September 24th, 1994, he summoned 125 members at the order of the solar temple to Avignon France. And it is here that he finally revealed the two big changes to the plan. The first was that everyone in the order would now report directly to him before there had been various lodges with different levels of leaders and everything to help them sort of spread the cult across different countries. But now everything is just going straight to Joseph. Second, he tells everyone that the apocalypse is indeed coming. Their time on Earth is running out, but there is a way out. And it is called the transit. What's the transit, Karen? Oh, let me tell you. It's a spiritual voyage where members would leave their earthly bodies behind and travel to the star serious, which Joseph claimed was the home of the ascended masters, the spiritual beings who came before them. The night's temple are basically. So why, like, how many cults can get away with saying, let's go to the stars, leave your earthly bodies behind. Yeah. It would involve ritual fire and it needed to happen soon. It's not out of left field because they did kind of provide some of these details. Yeah. Or it was like, you're going to be called upon. It's going to be short notice when things happen. You know, people were somewhat prepped to know that they're not going to have enough time to ask any questions. And they've always been told that like the night's temple are had been waiting for them, right? Man, he told them to be on 24 hour alert that they could be summoned at any moment and that there was a UFO waiting for them to take them to the star. So it's really hard to not talk about how similar this sounds to Heaven's Gate. Because it sounds so similar. And if you remember Heaven's Gate in episode one of this season, we talked about they believe there was a UFO coming to Earth with the Halebop comment and that UFO was going to take them to leave the earthly bodies behind. But these two groups had nothing to do with one another. They guess their angles were the same, but they really there's no connection between them, which is kind of crazy. Yeah, it is. So Joseph and Luke said this transit was imminent. We're talking months, maybe even weeks. And of course, the ticket onto that UFO was not free. That transit required a sacrifice. And Joseph didn't really say what that sacrifice meant. But in just a few days, his message would become terrifyingly clear. And by the time it was over 74 people would be dead. Some of the details regarding the transit are hard to decipher, but here's the truth. While it was certainly an ideology pivot, it didn't come out of nowhere, kind of like you were saying. For years, they had been planning the seed of this idea, but no one really knew what it meant. Not like the, it was always so vague, right? But the truth was. the transit wasn't going to involve a spaceship picking them up from Earth. No, the transit was death. Which like again, that's the same thing that was and have it skate 100. Yeah, it was like, oh well, if you thought that it was your physical body that was going, you're wrong. It's your soul transcending and being brought there. So sad. Okay, so before we go any further, we do need to give a content warning right here that it is about to get pretty dark. I think you can guess what's coming. There's going to be a lot of death and there are some children involved. Yeah. Joseph Demembro told his followers that if they wanted to get on the UFO, they had to make a sacrifice. And some of them took that threat very seriously. Just one week after meeting in France, the transit began. And it started in Quebec with Tony De Toit, the technician who built the illusions and confirmed that the hoax was indeed a hoax alongside Joseph's son, Ellie, and had left and had completely left the cult. Yeah. He was trying to build a normal quiet life. And then on September 30th, 1994, Tony and his family were invited to dinner at a chalet in Quebec by Dominique Belleton, the mother of Joseph's divine infant Emmanuel. And if you're wondering why Tony would even go after receiving such an invitation, he had remained friends with Dominique. So he didn't really think anything was out of the ordinary. There were no alarm bells going off. He was like, okay, all right, we're going to have a normal dinner. Yeah, you have friends. Yeah. He literally brought his wife, Nikki, and his infant, his baby boy, Christopher, to dinner. And while they were there, Tony was asked to go to the basement and help move some furniture. He was like, sure, of course. I'll help you out. But something else was waiting down there for him. Or someone Joel Egger, one of Joseph's enforcers, Joel killed Tony violently and then went upstairs and killed his wife. And this next part is very hard because Joel also killed the Dutwaz baby. So apparently, Joseph hadn't just taught his followers that Dominique's daughter Emmanuel was the Messiah. Once Tony left and had this baby with his wife, Nikki, he also taught the members of the order that Tony's baby was the antichrist. And I read it. So I guess like Tony and his wife, Nikki, named their baby Christopher Emmanuel and Emmanuel was the name of the second Messiah and Joseph felt wronged by that and also wronged by Tony leaving and like outing the truth of all these things. So it's revenge. 100% it was revenge and it's just awful. Like then I do wish the UFO alien star people old nights were real and that they could look down and be like, absolutely not and just zap the bad guy's dead. We'll see what Joseph told all the members was that in order for the transit to happen successfully for them to survive the apocalypse, the antichrist had to be done. Can you imagine trying to convince a bunch of people to end their lives, but in order to do so, you have to go travel across a ocean to an innocent infant child and kill a baby. How in that moment were people I'm getting so mad. No, it's sick. I like, if he was here a bunch of in the face, it's awful. And Christopher and Emmanuel do 12 was just three three months old. Like how do people not leave them? They were preached that this was like necessary. It's so awful. It's so awful. Yeah. And unfortunately, this is when all these sacrifices are only just beginning. Yeah. So after killing the do 12 family, Dominique and Joel caught the next flight to Zerks, Switzerland, two others from the order who were in on the plot took sedatives, set the building on fire, stayed inside while it burned, and the charge remains of the detours and the two other members would not be found for a few days. Also similar to heaven's gate. Yeah. I know. In the meantime, the violence continued in Switzerland. Four days later, on the morning of October 4, 1993, volunteer firefighters in the small Swiss town of Solven responded to a burnt home in the countryside. Inside, they found 14 bodies, including Dominique and her 12-year-old daughter, Emmanuel. There were two other shallies just like it. Eleven more people dead. In each scene, it looked like they had all been arranged in some sort of ritual-esque fashion, which is what we described as like the narrative in the very beginning of part one of the story. While the firefighters and cellophon were combing through the wreckage 62 miles to the north in a town called Cherie, a different volunteer firefighter team responded to another fire at a different chalet, and there they found 23 more bodies. Most of them were burnt so badly they could only be identified through dental records. Amongst these bodies included Kami Pillay, the watch executive, also Joseph Sun, Ellie, who his own father killed him. It makes me so sad, Joel. I mean, like, think about all the things that his father did to him. It's not unbelievable, but it still is. It's just like that. How can you fathom? Devastating. Joel Egger, who had killed the Dutwa family, was also found in that chalet, and so in a matter of days, 53 people were dead, and the way in which the bodies were found was not random. Many of them were determined to have been drugged first, then shot, some were suffocated with plastic bags, and then their bodies were arranged deliberately in circular patterns with their feet pointing inward, very ritualistically. A letter was found in the wreckage that explicitly denounced Luke Jere, meaning someone was trying to leave before they were drugged, killed, and then placed in this way. I was scary in those final moments for them. Of the 53 deaths, only 15 were confirmed as suicides, meaning the other 38 were classified as homicides, or still undetermined. The point being, these people did not want to die. No. They were murdered. It kind of reminds me of Jim Jones, right? But the Kool-Aid, Drinking the Kool-Aid. Yeah. Because not everyone wanted to. Wanted to. Yes. Which we will also be talking about this season. Stay tuned. There were two bodies amongst the 53 that were found completely untouched by flames, a 70-year-old man in ceremonial clothing, and a 47-year-old man beside him. Can you guess who those two people were? Joseph Demembro and Luke Shere. Lying together at the center of the inferno in costumes surrounded by their followers. I don't think they're in costumes. Well, ceremonial clothing. Oh. It's a costume. They're wearing shiny gold capes. I just don't know if it's that. And they have smoke and beard. Things involved. This whole time I'm thinking everything's a costume because it just feels so fake. But yeah, so they were lying together in the center of the inferno. Everyone's around them. Everybody has been consumed by the fire except for them. Which means that they watched everything burn. Yeah. And then watched past all the dead bodies of people that they should have loved and felt such attachment to. And then died by suicide and placed themselves in the center. Okay. So until this happened, while the order had been under investigation and found themselves in the media, it was kind of a fringe story up until this point. So a couple of scattered news pieces, anti-cult activists, that sort of thing. But after October 4th, 1994, this was front page news all across Europe and most of North America as well. The story from that morning was the one that Joseph wanted them to tell. It was a mass suicide, a tragic but spiritually motivated departure that all the dead had chosen to go. But that was a lie. As we now know. But at the time, they did not. So days after this story broken, these horrors were found. Swiss authorities received a package in the mail from a surviving member of the order. And in this package were what they called the testaments. And it was basically Joseph's manifesto. The testaments claimed that all of the dead had begun their transit. That they were ascending to a new level of being and that this had been a voluntary spiritual departure or a graduation. And they were gaining passage to the star series, where the Knights Templar was waiting for them. The testaments were very specific about the number of people that had to die. And Joseph had wanted it to be 54 deaths. Because that's how many Knights Templar were killed 54 on that one particular day. Yes. But they fell one short. Only 53 people died. And this is like so said, eight of the 53 were children. Despite the testaments and what they said, like we already insinuated most of these people did not choose to die. And I wish we could say the story ended here. Because even if it ended here, it would still be one of the darkest cult-related tragedies ever. But unfortunately, even after Joseph and Luke died, the evil did not end. One summer evening when she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna Luke. I can't figure it out, but I do know that it was a violation. Then people started asking questions. What a creep. Who else knows about this? From CBCs personally, this is Agent Leila. The story of how a victim went undercover. So bring it on. Let's go. Let's get a confession. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. So yeah, sadly, after those 53 deaths, that was the first wave of deaths. Really, there was more. Most of the surviving members of the order left the cult. And these people were not interested. and talking to anyone about what was going on. So not the press, not the police, not anyone. So there was still a lot of secrecy and a lot that was unknown about like how everything operated. - Right. - They wanted to just pretend it didn't happen, disappear back into their little ordinary lives. - 'Cause if we remember the meeting that Joseph had called, he had called 125 members saying that the end was like, nah, it was gonna be happening imminently. And right now we only have 53 deaths. - Yeah. So some people did try to assimilate back into their own lives. - Yeah. - But there were 20 members in France that kept on going within the order. They kept the meetings, they kept performing the rituals and they had a new leader now. A psychotherapist named Christian Bonnet. On December 15th, 1995, one and a half years after that first wave of deaths, which seems crazy to even call it a wave, 'cause now we know that there's more coming. - And it's like a mass murder. - Yeah, Christian told her followers that she had made psychic contact with Joseph and more sacrifices needed to be made. 12 other members joined her that day. All 13 of them, plus three little kids, left their homes, walked outside into the snow, and eight days later they were found deceased in a clearing in the mountains. In France's Veracore Mountain Range, in a place that locals called the Well of Hell. Their bodies were arranged in a circle. Two of the members had shot and burned all of the others before turning the guns on themselves. Four of them left notes back at their houses, saying that they wanted to see another world. - And I wanna pause to talk about the victims here because they wore people with real lives who unfortunately believed in the wrong people. Among this second tragedy, second wave of deaths, were a former Olympic skier and her son, two policemen, and a lot of these victims were successful, accomplished people, but were led to believe this life so strongly that they were willing to lose everything. And again, many of these victims did not choose to die. - Especially the children, it's just awful. - It must be up. - And there were still more deaths to come. In the spring of 1997, in Saint Cosmier, Quebec, a two-story house erupted into flames. Five people died, a couple, the woman's mother, and two others all with ties to the order. A letter was left behind explaining that they had been waiting to die since the 1994 massacres. - Which is such a wild thing to come across, to read, to try to understand. But if we wanna just pick one silver lining from all of this, there were three teenagers in that house in Quebec who had grown up inside of the order and the adults in their lives had literally sedated them, trying to take them out with them, but all three of these kids survived. - Yeah, that is a silver lining. - Yes. They were found in a barn next to the burnt-down house. They were sedated, but still alive, which is amazing. We're not really sure, exactly. I mean, they were in a separate building, so we don't know if they, like the people, the adults inside, just assume the flames would eventually get in the barn. - Yeah. - Or not, it doesn't matter if they survived, and that's what we're happy about. - And thankfully, the deaths stopped after that. The final death toll was 74 people across three countries over three years, and 11 of them were children. The final deaths happened literally right before heaven's gate mass suicide event, which happened and started on March 22nd, 1997. So it really is wild that these two groups were operating around the same time, but completely unconnected. But it also, like, doesn't feel like that much of a coincidence because they had very similar messages, which kind of makes you look at the time, and like the groundwork of society and that era. Both of them were forming in the New Age explosion in the '70s, where people were looking for alternative ways to express faith, belief, and look for salvation. And their messages became increasingly darker as the apocalyptic anxiety grew at the end of the 20th century. Like, you know, we joke about Y2K, but it was a very real fear that people had. And then there was the UFO piece of it, which both heaven's gate and the order of the solar temple, it's a very big part of both of them, but that was also seeping into mainstream at that time. Movies, TV, comic books, it wasn't just a fringe thing anymore, it was becoming mainstream. Joseph, Demandbro, and Marshall Appleite, who was the leader of heaven's gate, were independently drawing from the same cultural well. Yes, they built different cults with different theologies, but they ended up at the same destination, which was a cosmic transit that involved a UFO, a doomed earth, and a leader telling people that the only way to be saved was to leave the body behind. And also like heaven's gate, some people from the order of the solar temple survived the chaos. In this case, one of those people was Michelle Tobachnik, the music conductor who helped Joseph write the foundational texts of the order of the solar temple. Michelle may have thought that he was just helping a friend organize his thoughts, but in 2001, he was tried in France for conspiracy to commit mass murder, and those texts that he had written were the primary evidence that he wrote against him. Yes, but Michelle had not been anywhere near the crime scene over the years, and his lawyers argued that he had been manipulated by Joseph the same way that all the other followers had been. Michelle was acquitted, and the appeals court upheld the verdict in 2006. So whether Michelle was ever a true believer or just maybe useful in terms of his intellectual work that got weaponized, only a question he can answer. But Michelle is the only senior figure from the order to have survived it. Which does make sense that like, people who lost their loved ones want someone to be held accountable. And like, he truly is part of the origin story of the order of the solar temple. So like, you wanna point a finger at someone 'cause everyone else is dead. It's hard 'cause it's like someone writes vampire diaries and then a bunch of other people go out and they're like, oh, this is factual and I'm gonna start killing and murdering people. But it's a little bit different because are you upset with the writers? But he wrote it with Joseph. Like, it's not like he wrote it and then Joseph took his writings. They was like, no, together, they did this. I know it's so hard though, because there's so much that has evolved from that time. Yeah, I guess I just don't know all the details of Michelle's involvement. But point being, he was acquitted. And when it comes to deadly cults, the order of the solar temple doesn't always get the attention that some of the bigger cults like Heaven's Gate and Jonestown do, which again, we will be covering Jonestown soon. But I feel like the order of the solar temple needs to be talked about not because it's fun in any way to talk about how 74 people were pretty much murdered. But because it shows how dangerous belief can become when it's weaponized. A lot of people were joining for a place to belong to discuss these greater ideas for the community, for the ritual to feel like they were a part of something bigger. I mean, the Freemasons still exist today. Yeah, so much secrecy. Like, I don't even understand what's going on in the Freemasons. A lot of organizations are like, what's happening? Yeah, there are plenty of organizations with secret rituals that are completely harmless. Like sororities, we talked about our own experiences. And on the surface, the order of the solar temple was fronted by a life coach who was able to sell them a lie that they were valued and that they had potential for something greater. But in the end, they were just pawns in the game nobody understood. And they were then sacrificed or murdered. Exactly. For no reason at all. And the real crime of the order of the solar temple is not that people believed in UFOs. It's not that people believed in past lives. It's not that people wanted to believe or feel that they were chosen. Yeah. Those are not crimes. Those are human responses to a world that doesn't always offer a sense of purpose. Yeah. But the real crime of the order of the solar temple is that two men built a machine designed to make people trust them without question. And when the machine started breaking, Joseph decided that everyone inside the machine would go down with it. Just horrible. So to end this episode, we want to let people know that there are resources if you think that you or someone you know is trapped in a cult. And we'll have those resources in the show notes for you. But we just want you to remember that there is a way out. [MUSIC PLAYING] And that is the story, the true, very horrifying tragic story of the order of the solar temple. And we can slam our gavils stabbly. And justice has not been served. It doesn't feel that way. So many people passed. It feels very unfair. But we're grateful that you joined us for this week. We love you all, jurors. Yeah, and thank you for listening. We are your hosts, Sabrina Deanna Broga and Corinne Vien. Join us next Tuesday for another peek inside another crimes of cults. And if there are any cases you would like us to cover, please let us know in the comments. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, please reach out on all social media at Crime House. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow "Crimes of" wherever you get your podcasts, because your feedback truly makes a difference. Bye, jurors. [MUSIC PLAYING] One of everything you learned in history class was only half the story. I'm Dr. Herney Bot. I start as a clinical pharmacist. And somewhere along the way, I became obsessed with the mysteries, the history never fully sought. That's exactly why I created Hidden History, a rewind students' original podcast powered by Pave Studios. Every Monday I go where history touches the unknown. Vanishing civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena, and events that science still can't fully explain. I'll give you historical context, I'll break down the science, I'll even interrogate the supernatural. I treat these moments like open case files, not miss, not superstition, just incomplete explanations waiting for a closer look. And I'll ask the question, "What if this happened today?" Listen to and follow Hidden History available now wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening to this episode from Crime House. If you're looking for another show to check out, listen to serial killers and murderous minds. Every Monday and Thursday, Dr. Tristan Engels and myself dig into the most chilling murders and uncover what drives them to kill. 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