Belgian-Canadian cultist, born in Zaire, the charismatic leader of the Solar Temple Order. He was held responsible for the violent death, a mass murder of collective suicide, of 53 of his following, 48 in Switzerland and 5 in Canada, on 10/04/1994.
A handsome physician, he worked with a colleague, Joseph di Mambro, 69, a French-Canadian known as “the dictator,” the financial mastermind of the cult. Believed to be about ten years old, the Order had an estimated 300 members to whom they preached a hodgepodge of Catholic conservationism and apocalypse.
On 1/05/1994, police found what was first considered to be a mass cult suicide in Switzerland, 23 bodies in the half burned out ruins of a farm in Cheiry, 45 miles north-east of Geneva. Another 25 bodies were uncovered in three chalets at Granges-sur-Salvan in the Swiss alps and five more in a villa in Morin Heights, Canada, about 50 miles north-west of Montreal. It was soon found to be mass murder, not suicides. Three of the Quebec victims, including a three-month-old baby, were stabbed to death. Those in Switzerland had been shot, suffocated with plastic bags over their heads or burned to death. The fires had been set off with timers.
On October 13th, Jouret’s and Mambro’s bodies were found. Jouret had died in Granges the evening of 10/04/1994. It was believed that rising tensions between the two men over cult control and over vast sums of money invested in properties may have been the motive.
Link to Wikipedia biography