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1:48

Hey, I'm Julianne Morgans and you're listening to what

1:50

it was like. The show that asks

1:52

people who have lived through big, dramatic events,

1:55

what it was like. Hey

2:09

and welcome back. This is

2:11

part 2 of our 2 part series on

2:13

the Order of the Silla Temple. In

2:16

F1 we got to know the leaders of the

2:18

cult and we watched them transform from relatively

2:21

harmless eccentrics into tyrants.

2:24

If you haven't heard that episode, what are you doing?

2:27

Don't start at number 2. Go back. Start

2:29

at number 1. Do this properly. But

2:32

for the rest of you. We're going to use

2:34

this ep to unpack the cult's very

2:37

messy end. This episode

2:39

is going to take us through a series of mass

2:41

suicides. It's kind of gory. It's

2:43

a pretty grim episode in a lot of ways.

2:45

But I think it can teach

2:47

us a lot. A lot about fanaticism. A

2:50

lot about the nature of beliefs. Who

2:53

exactly kills themselves

2:55

for a cult? Let's

2:58

find out. Our story in

3:00

the last ep just ended with a triple murder

3:02

in the ski town of Morin Heights. About

3:05

an hour outside of Montreal. And

3:07

on the same day, on the 30th of September

3:09

1994, in

3:11

Switzerland the cult's leaders, de Mambro

3:13

and Girat, were seen having dinner with

3:15

seven others at a five star hotel

3:18

next to a lake. At

3:20

that point, the couple with the baby weren't

3:22

dead in Quebec, but the cult's assassins were

3:24

on a plane somewhere over the

3:27

Atlantic en route to meet them. So

3:30

in this moment, witnesses say that they

3:32

saw Girat and de Mambro eating dinner.

3:35

And every now and then they'd get up and go make a

3:37

phone call and then they'd sit back down at the table and

3:39

just sort of resume the conversation.

3:42

And we know that around that time, they

3:44

were busily organizing a meeting. Or

3:47

they were calling it a meeting, inverted

3:49

commas. And

3:52

what they'd done was that they'd told a

3:54

list of variously disgruntled members and ex-members that

3:56

they were about to get their money back.

3:59

I've mentioned that in the last years

4:01

of the Solar Temple, many people left

4:03

and many of those departures were due

4:06

to disputes about money. The

4:08

Solar Temple was a wealthy organization, you know,

4:11

as far as cults go, they had millions

4:13

of dollars in cash and real estate spread

4:15

around the world, but all that money had

4:17

been donated by members and

4:19

a lot of them wanted it back. So

4:22

Girat and D'Amembo, they told a list of about 20

4:25

of their unhappiest benefactors to come to

4:27

the farmhouse in Shiri for a meeting

4:30

where they'd get their money back. And

4:33

many agreed. At the top

4:35

of the list was the principal

4:37

investor in the farmhouse, Elbert Jacobino,

4:39

who'd bought the property to grow

4:41

macrobiotic foods. He'd fallen into

4:43

a bitter fight with D'Amembo and he was relieved

4:45

to hear that they were going to hold a

4:47

meeting and he'd be reimbursed. And

4:50

he even brought along his friend,

4:52

Marie-Louise Rubiano, who was previously the

4:54

group's astrologer. Another

4:56

former member named Robert Falado also

4:58

gone on a flight from Montreal

5:01

to Switzerland to represent the cults

5:03

members in Quebec. And

5:05

another notable invite was actually Girat's

5:07

ex-wife. Her and Girat had

5:10

married in the early 1980s, but

5:12

they divorced after their only child died

5:14

in infancy. Now

5:16

you might have already picked up on this, but

5:18

Girat and D'Amembo had no

5:20

intention of reimbursing anyone for

5:23

any money. Instead,

5:25

this was a hit list. The

5:28

two men privately referred to the people invited

5:30

to Shiri as traitors and

5:32

they were inviting them to a massacre. Their

5:36

plan, right from the very beginning, was

5:38

to gather everyone who they felt had

5:40

wronged the temple and then

5:42

murdered them. So

5:45

here we arrive at my first

5:47

major point, my first major

5:49

bit of analysis. I know

5:51

that the title of these shows is The

5:53

Swiss Cult That Ended With Five Mass Suicides,

5:55

but really, really, in all honesty, this title

5:58

is a bit of an oversimplifying. It's a

6:00

bit of a clickbait. Because

6:02

not all of the suicides were suicides.

6:04

And really what took place under the

6:06

farm in this little town in Shiri,

6:08

it was actually a massacre. It

6:11

was a trap for former members lured

6:13

there under false pretense and they were

6:15

slaughtered. Only three or

6:17

four of those people died willingly. And

6:20

in a moment, we'll dig into some learnings, but

6:22

let's just stay on the timeline. So

6:25

this ex-member, Robert Falado, he arrives in Switzerland

6:27

from Montreal and he thinks it's going to

6:29

be a quick stay. He'd

6:31

actually booked a return flight on the next day, on

6:33

the third. And when he arrived

6:36

on the second, he called his wife and he

6:38

said, everything's fine, it's all good. But

6:40

actually, we know now that he called a

6:42

friend right after the phone call to his

6:45

wife. And he told this friend, this

6:47

is a quote, things are happening

6:49

here that I do not understand at

6:51

all. And

6:53

that phone call, that was the last time anyone

6:55

heard from him. That

6:58

evening, he drove out to the farmhouse in

7:00

Shiri to find Jaret welcoming members as they

7:02

poured in from around Switzerland and France. And

7:06

to be clear, this was the farmhouse that we

7:08

started with in part one. It

7:11

was a cold late afternoon and the autumn leaves

7:13

were turning red around the farm. And

7:16

I imagine that there were a few cars parked in the

7:18

drive and some big hugs. You know, these are people who

7:20

haven't seen each other for a while. Maybe

7:23

a few tepid handshakes too. A

7:25

lot of these friendships had become openly hostile.

7:27

So there were probably some pretty awkward moments.

7:29

A few families arrived too, including a husband

7:32

and wife with their two teenage kids, a

7:35

16 year old girl and her 18 year old

7:37

brother. Also a

7:39

mother arrived with her 11 year old

7:41

son, Sebastian. They

7:43

all filed down the steps into the hidden temple

7:46

and it went quite smoothly at

7:48

first. We don't actually know

7:50

what happened down there. It's impossible to know.

7:52

There were no survivors. But investigators

7:55

believe that once they were inside the temple,

7:57

the doors were locked and everyone was in

7:59

that first room, you know the one that I

8:01

talked about with all the suitcases stacked on the desks

8:04

and the red walls. So

8:06

once they were in there, Jaret addressed

8:08

the congregation. D'Mambro wasn't

8:10

there, but a series of phone calls indicate

8:12

that they were in constant communication. It

8:15

seems like there were two other ringleaders as well. A

8:18

man named Daniel Jaton, who was the

8:20

father to the two teenage children, also

8:23

placed several phone calls to D'Mambro, and

8:26

the string that was used to tie up the victims that was

8:28

found in his pocket. And then

8:30

there was Joelle Egger, who you already know.

8:32

He was the fanatical former drug addict who

8:34

had just returned from Quebec after the triple

8:36

homicide. So investigators believe

8:39

the evening began with Jaret addressing

8:41

the group, while Egger

8:43

and Jaton stood on either side of

8:45

the room like bouncers. And

8:47

it seems as though the first victim was

8:49

Elbert Jacobino, the farm owner. Again,

8:52

we don't know what happened, but Elbert wasn't found

8:54

in the temple. Investigators speculated

8:57

that he'd been the loudest voice of

8:59

dissent, so maybe Joelle Egger had invited

9:01

him for a walk just to cool

9:03

down. Perhaps then, once

9:05

outside, he was shot and bundled into

9:07

bed. His body may have even

9:09

been hidden from the others to avoid panic. After

9:12

that, most of the bodies showed

9:14

some sign of struggle. Almost

9:17

all of the victims had at least one

9:19

gunshot wound to the head. One

9:21

victim was shot no less than nine times in the

9:23

head and the neck. And

9:25

in just two cases, there was no evidence

9:27

of external intervention, and the cause of death

9:30

could not be established for three other victims.

9:32

Everyone was killed with a Smith Wesson .22

9:35

pistol that had been bought by Egger, who

9:37

was also responsible for rigging up the ignition

9:39

system to burn the buildings down. Obviously,

9:42

this system only worked on the upstairs part of

9:45

the barn. Based

9:47

on phone records, the massacre continued into the

9:49

early hours of October 3, when Jaret finally

9:53

called D'Amembro to inform him that the operation

9:55

had been a success. After

9:57

that, another call was placed by Egger, also to

9:59

do so. Mambu. Finally,

10:02

at about 8am, the Shiri mailman

10:04

witnessed a red ford fiesta containing

10:06

two young men coming down from

10:08

the farm and heading towards the

10:10

village. And that was it. We

10:13

can assume that this was Jaret and Eger

10:15

leaving behind the bodies of 23 temple members

10:18

who lay scattered and bleeding throughout the

10:20

underground chambers and lay there

10:22

for the whole next day and the next

10:24

night until the incendiary devices in the barn

10:26

were triggered on the evening of October 4.

10:29

And here I want to return to

10:32

my central question of the episode. How

10:34

do mass suicides occur? And

10:37

I think that what we can take from the massacre at Shiri

10:39

is that obedience exists on

10:41

a sliding scale. There

10:44

were some there who died by suicide, but

10:46

the vast majority were murdered. I

10:49

started this episode making comparisons with Jonestown,

10:52

and a few of you got in touch to point

10:54

out that Jonestown was actually a mass murder, and

10:58

you're absolutely right. That was

11:00

actually the point that I was holding off, making

11:03

until right now. Let's get

11:05

into it. Jonestown, which was run by Christian

11:07

minister Jim Jones, ended in 1978 when 909

11:12

people, about half of them children, were

11:14

forced to drink cyanide. Newspapers

11:17

at the time called the event a

11:19

mass suicide, but it happened under armed

11:21

guard in an incredibly remote jungle compound

11:24

in the South American country of Guyana. Suicide

11:27

was at gunpoint, and there was nowhere to run.

11:30

So historians now agree that Jonestown

11:32

should be classified a mass murder

11:34

suicide, not a mass

11:36

suicide. Quick note here,

11:39

I actually interviewed a Jonestown survivor on

11:41

my last podcast, and he talked about

11:43

the conditioning that led over

11:45

900 people to their deaths. I

11:48

think it's very illuminating, so I'm going to link

11:50

out to that episode in the show notes. Anyway,

11:54

the same Jonestown dynamics played out

11:56

in Sherry. The members

11:58

were at gunpoint with nowhere to go. Most

12:00

were murdered. And yet

12:03

a small number, a very small number,

12:05

went willingly. As

12:08

I said, several children died in the

12:10

catastrophe, and one of

12:12

these kids was 11-year-old Sebastian

12:14

Peugeot, who had glued a sheet

12:17

of paper on the wall above his bed with

12:19

a handwritten note. And the

12:21

note said this, For

12:24

our master, who was guiding us step by

12:26

step on the big path to

12:28

the eternal light. I

12:31

mean that seems like a message, penned by a

12:33

kid who was pretty devoted to the cult. Or

12:36

I guess a kid with a mother who was.

12:40

Anyway let's stay on the day of October 3rd. Geroz

12:43

and Ego have now fled the farm,

12:45

and the next eyewitness account places D'Mambro

12:47

having lunch with his inner circle at

12:50

a restaurant called the St. Christopher Restaurant

12:52

in the Swiss town of Bex. And

12:55

I looked the place up, and the restaurant's still there. If

12:58

you want a dark tourism experience, you can go. Four

13:02

out of five stars on TripAdvisor, if you're

13:04

interested. Anyway, a witness

13:07

later said that the lunch party had

13:09

an absent and sad air about them,

13:11

and they barely ate. And

13:14

I don't think that's surprising, given the carnage

13:16

they'd just overseen. But also

13:18

keep in mind that this is their last day

13:21

on planet Earth. These people were

13:23

all planning to die the next night on October

13:25

4th, so I guess a heavy sombre mood at

13:27

the table was understandable. And it's

13:29

unknown what D'Mambro and Geroz did with their

13:31

last night. But we do

13:34

know that the following morning, Geroz was

13:36

seen at 10am in a grocery store

13:38

buying garbage bags. These

13:40

were later used to cover the heads of the dead. And

13:43

that same morning, the families of those killed at

13:45

Sherry were starting to get worried. Robert

13:49

Folaudu's wife was frantically calling the other

13:51

members, after her husband missed his flight

13:53

back to Montreal. D'Mambro

13:55

actually had his wife call and tell her

13:57

that Robert was just doing fine, and he

14:00

actually hanging out with another member.

14:03

Robert's wife would find out that he

14:05

was actually dead in the next few

14:07

days. Then at about 4pm,

14:10

Jaret arrived at the Les Roches

14:12

de Cristal-Chalet in the resort town

14:14

of Sölvin. And

14:16

this is another extremely cute Swiss

14:18

town, about an hour away from

14:20

Scheri. The whole village

14:23

is perched on a hillside with the Alps

14:25

towering above the medieval buildings. And

14:27

Jaret had announced that another congregation would

14:30

take place here at the Chalet. And

14:33

this time, most of the attendees were

14:35

aware that this would be their final

14:37

transit to the Star of Sirius. But

14:40

some more so-called traitors were again told that

14:42

this was an opportunity to get their money

14:45

back. And

14:47

at the top of traitor list number two

14:49

was a guy named Terry Hugener. And

14:52

he's unique because he's one of the cult's

14:55

very few survivors. He

14:57

joined a few years earlier, only to have

14:59

his marriage split up and his wife, who

15:01

was in her 30s, told to hook up

15:03

with De Mambro's 14-year-old son. Despite

15:06

this, somehow Terry's loyalty persisted,

15:08

until he started to feel like he

15:10

was being financially exploited. And at that

15:12

point, he left the group and started

15:15

pestering De Mambro for a refund, until

15:17

finally the cult leader agreed. Come

15:20

to the Selvin Chalet, he was told. And

15:22

we'll have your money waiting for you in an envelope. So

15:25

in the afternoon of October 4, 1994,

15:27

Terry drove from Geneva to the Chalet.

15:30

But when he parked his car and

15:32

met Jaret at the door, something

15:34

felt wrong. He later

15:37

said that Jaret was acting weird while Edgar,

15:39

quote, wasn't in his right mind. Then

15:42

when he was ushered into the Chalet, the smell of

15:44

petrol hit him like a brick. He

15:46

says the building, which was basically a barn

15:48

shaped holiday unit, smelled like it

15:50

was about to explode. So he politely

15:52

stepped back outside and managed to slip

15:54

away. Then he drove back

15:56

to Geneva and later learned about the mass suicide

15:59

via the news. And

16:01

Terry wrote about all of this in a

16:03

book called Le 54ie, which

16:05

translates to the 54th, and

16:08

that's a significant title. As

16:10

Terry explained, D'Mambro wanted his

16:13

mass suicides to claim exactly

16:15

54 victims. And

16:17

this is because back in the 14th century, 54 Knights

16:21

Templar were burned at the stake. So

16:24

D'Mambro wanted this historical echo.

16:27

He believed that if the Solar Temple had exactly

16:29

54 victims, this would kind

16:31

of turbocharge their passage across the universe

16:34

to the Star of Sirius, where

16:36

they'd be in paradise forever. But

16:39

Terry got in the way of this plan.

16:41

He snuck off, and D'Mambro and Jarett's double

16:43

massacre claimed 53 lives,

16:45

leaving Terry as the very much

16:47

alive 54th. After

16:52

Terry bailed, we know that everyone else arrived on

16:54

time, and the massacre went ahead

16:56

in two chalets, basically his plan. Again,

16:58

we don't know exactly the series of events,

17:01

but a few details stand out. First

17:04

of all, there's the fact that D'Mambro took his children

17:06

to die with him. You'll remember

17:08

that he had a daughter named Emanuela. She

17:11

was only 12 years old. And

17:13

he also took his 25-year-old son Siegfried

17:15

D'Mambro. And they were

17:17

known to have an extremely fractured relationship, so

17:19

there's been some speculations that his death was

17:21

actually a kind of revenge. And

17:24

then there were the two mothers who both took their children. One

17:27

of these kids was aged 4, the other was aged 10. And

17:31

then everyone at the chalet, including the

17:33

kids, was injected with a heavy mix

17:35

of benzodiazepines and opioids. So

17:37

it was hopefully quite a peaceful death. But

17:40

still. Thinking

17:42

about this, I'm reminded of the 2004 German

17:45

film Downfall. You

17:47

might remember it. It centres around

17:49

the last days of Hitler and his inner circle

17:51

in a bunker in Berlin. And

17:54

there's this final scene, this amazing but

17:56

very hard-to-watch final scene where Hitler and

17:59

his comrades, they realize they've lost.

18:01

The war's over and they're about to get

18:03

smashed by the Red Army. And

18:05

you watch as Joseph Goebbels' wife,

18:08

Magda, she poisons their six children

18:10

with cyanide capsules in this very

18:13

motherly way. The kids

18:15

are asleep and she just goes around this little room

18:18

in the bunker, tenderly placing a

18:20

capsule in each child's mouth and then

18:22

she clamps their jaw together to crush

18:24

the casing and then

18:26

their heads slump over. And

18:30

I feel like this scene might help to

18:32

illustrate what happened in this key chalet in

18:34

Sullivan. This grim sense

18:36

of duty, this very

18:38

upside down kind of love. I've

18:42

mentioned a few times before, I've got a

18:44

three-year-old daughter and the notion that anyone

18:47

could willingly poison their kid just

18:49

makes my brain stop working. I

18:52

just don't believe in anything enough to hurt my

18:54

own kid. And yet these parents

18:56

did. They were so far inside

18:58

this story that they were willing to hurt their

19:01

own children. And that

19:03

is faith. That is total conviction.

19:07

And I guess what we can take

19:09

away from that is that if the

19:11

previous meeting beneath the farmhouse in Shirey,

19:14

if that was a mass murder, then this

19:16

second one in Sullivan, it

19:18

was mostly suicide. Later,

19:21

one investigator described how this fanatical belief

19:23

was illustrated to him while working on

19:25

the case. This was

19:27

a few months after the deaths and he described

19:29

how a temple member came into his office one

19:32

day dressed in a dark red cape. And

19:35

she was devastated, she said, not because her

19:37

friends had died, but because she wasn't invited

19:39

to the transit with the rest of the

19:41

group. And this investigator

19:43

replied, transit? What?

19:46

People with bullets in their heads? What kind of

19:48

transit is that? And

19:50

apparently she looked at this investigator, you know, this cop,

19:52

she looked at him straight in the eye and she

19:55

said this, no, they

19:57

all wanted the transit, but they didn't have

19:59

the courage to go. I might

20:02

not have had the courage either, and I would have been

20:04

happy if someone had helped me. If it

20:06

was necessary, why not? So

20:09

there you go. That's the kind of

20:11

diversion that this cult inspired in its members. It's

20:13

adult members at least. But children?

20:16

I don't know. I don't think so. I

20:18

think that's just murder. And

20:20

I found another interview with a town official who

20:22

entered this shellay to find all of these dead

20:24

kids. And I think, I've got

20:26

a quote here that really illustrates that horror.

20:29

This man, this town official, he

20:31

said this. Behind

20:33

this door, a shock. There

20:36

were bodies lying there, completely burned. There

20:39

were children. I immediately thought that they'd

20:41

been drugged because I saw them with their thumbs

20:43

in their mouths. They must have

20:45

been sleeping peacefully when everything happened. And

20:49

it's details like that that make me squirm. Okay,

20:54

so back to the timeline of what happened

20:56

in this shellay. And we actually have some evidence of what

20:58

occurred right at the very end, right before the fire. And

21:01

that comes in the form of

21:04

a VHS video. This videotape was discovered by investigators,

21:06

and it shows about a dozen

21:09

followers, including Charette, D'Mambo, and Joelle

21:11

Egger, sharing what looks like their

21:13

final meal. I haven't

21:15

seen this video. I've just read about it. But

21:18

a few accounts suggest that their sitting

21:21

at a dining room table in

21:23

the shellay, and they're singing. They're

21:25

singing the nights of

21:27

the round table. And then they raise their

21:29

glasses at the end to a toast, and they drink a liquid, which

21:32

seems to make them sleepy. And in the last few

21:34

minutes of this video, they kind of slumped

21:36

against each other. Some of them look asleep. And then the

21:38

video ends showing two of the

21:41

children who seem either unconscious or dead before the camera

21:44

pans to D'Mambo's wife, who seems equally

21:49

motionless on the floor. After

21:52

that, at 11.33pm, D'Mambo called Egger one last time. I

21:55

actually don't know why as Egger was also filming. dead

22:00

at the chalet with him. But we

22:02

do know that it was a 39 second call. And

22:05

Eker, after that, he triggered

22:07

this remote control ignition system via

22:09

the telephone which set off the

22:11

fires in both Sherry and Sullivan.

22:13

25 people were found dead in

22:15

Sullivan, nearly all burned beyond recognition.

22:18

Gerat and D'Amembro's bodies had to be

22:20

identified via dental records. Over

22:23

the next few days the fires in Switzerland

22:25

were connected to the fire in Quebec, and

22:27

the scale of this atrocity became known. Newspapers

22:30

around the world ran stories on the case,

22:32

which you can still read in various archives.

22:35

Both the LA and New York Times seemed

22:37

particularly interested in the case, but all the

22:39

earlier reports are full of speculation. No

22:42

one knew much about the cult or their

22:44

motivations, and all of them talk about a

22:46

manhunt for Gerat and D'Amembro. As

22:49

I said, later they were identified at the

22:51

chalet by their dental records. And

22:54

then a tide of letters arrived

22:56

in mailboxes around the world. The

22:59

letters had been written by D'Amembro about a

23:01

week earlier. He'd titled these

23:03

letters the Testament, and they

23:05

were basically a description of the cult's beliefs

23:07

and a justification of their actions. Basically

23:10

a suicide note. There were

23:12

four pages with four headlines. The

23:14

first one was, to all those who

23:16

can still understand the voice of wisdom, we

23:19

addressed this last message. And

23:21

then there was the rose and the

23:23

cross. And then there was

23:25

another page titled, transit to the future, and

23:28

finally, to lovers of

23:30

justice. In

23:32

these letters he explained that they were not

23:35

dying by suicide, but in fact embarking on

23:37

a transit. And the quote was,

23:40

this is in no way a suicide in the

23:42

human sense of the term. Instead,

23:44

D'Amembro insisted that they were acquiring

23:47

these new, quote, solar

23:49

bodies, and they were going

23:51

to be reunited on the star Sirius, where

23:53

they'd live in happiness for the rest

23:56

of eternity. The other thing that the letters did

23:58

was reiterate how the cult had been posted. executed

24:00

for such a long time that their own lives

24:02

were no longer tenable. They had

24:04

to die, and this was not their fault. But

24:08

I think the most interesting detail, in these

24:10

letters, was a fifth page, added to only

24:12

some of them. It

24:15

seems like it was a little post-script added

24:17

after the massacre at Sherry, and

24:19

it was de Mambro's way of not just

24:21

admitting that the deaths at Sherry had been

24:23

a massacre, but blaming Jarett for its cruelty.

24:27

Following the tragic Sherry transit, he wrote, "...we

24:29

wish to make it clear on

24:32

behalf of the Rosy Cross that

24:34

we deplore and totally disassociate ourselves

24:36

from the barbaric, incompetent and aberrant

24:38

behaviour of Dr. Luke Jarett. Taking

24:42

the decision to act on his own

24:44

authority against all our rules, he has

24:46

transgressed our code of honour and the

24:48

cause of a veritable carnage that should

24:50

have been a transit carried out in

24:52

honour, peace and light." His

24:55

departure does not correspond to the

24:57

ethics we represent and defend to

24:59

posterity. So

25:01

that's interesting, right? That's a real window into

25:03

their relationship at the time. But

25:06

I think it also says a lot about Jarett. You

25:09

know, when I'm watching videos of this guy talking, when

25:11

I'm on YouTube and I watch Luke Jarett giving a

25:13

talk, I can actually imagine him

25:15

as a killer. He's just so

25:17

intense. I can see him in this

25:19

underground temple at Sherry, coldly shooting members

25:21

of his congregation one by one and

25:23

then him and Edgar spending an hour

25:25

dragging the bodies around to arrange them

25:27

in a circle. It would

25:29

have been hideous, messy work.

25:32

But I can imagine him doing it. And

25:35

it's interesting that D'Mambro actually takes on a

25:37

tone here, like he's been kind of spooked

25:39

by his co-founder. You know, there's an air

25:41

about this letter that's kind of like, well,

25:43

this guy, this guy is nuts. He's not

25:45

one of us. These

25:48

letters were received by various historians through

25:50

Europe and lots of newspapers. And

25:53

some of them were actually addressed to big public names

25:55

too, like Bill Clinton. But I

25:57

couldn't actually find any indication that Bill had

25:59

received it. Anyway,

26:02

these letters, it was quickly established that

26:04

Patrick Vornet, the heir of the French

26:06

ski wear brand, he was the guy

26:08

who'd sent the letters. He

26:10

was still alive and he was immediately rounded up

26:12

and questioned by the police. And

26:15

he claimed that he was simply the messenger. You

26:17

know, don't shoot the messenger. He didn't know anything.

26:19

So he was released without charge. But

26:22

he would remain under police surveillance for the rest of

26:24

his life. More on that in

26:26

a minute. Meanwhile hundreds

26:28

of journalists arrived in the villages of

26:30

Cheri and Sullivan to cover the story

26:32

and the sky buzzed with helicopters. The

26:35

police trawled through the ashes of two burned

26:37

chalets for weeks, but the buildings remained there

26:39

for months. Here's

26:41

a quote from the local official on the

26:43

chalet units in Sullivan. It

26:46

was an unbearable sight of horror. These

26:48

two chalets were ruins, ruins that remained

26:51

there for months and months. I

26:53

did everything I could to obtain permission to demolish

26:55

these houses. In the end, the

26:58

municipality managed to buy this land for a few

27:00

tens of thousands of francs, and the buildings were

27:02

raised. In the last months of 1994, fear

27:06

of cults spread through France and Switzerland.

27:09

And what seemed to shock people the most was that

27:11

the victims didn't fit the usual

27:13

image of vulnerable, easily influenced

27:16

cult members. Whereas Jonestown

27:18

attracted a much poorer, less socially mobile

27:20

congregation, the followers of the Sola Temple

27:23

were wealthy, and they held down jobs

27:25

in high places. A French

27:27

parliamentary commission was even set up to

27:29

map out the country's alternative religions and

27:31

to keep tabs on those suspected of

27:33

posing a risk to society. New

27:36

laws were also passed, making it harder

27:38

for sects to claim immunity from prosecution

27:41

for crimes. But

27:43

to me, what is truly surprising and

27:45

really quite unique in the world of cults

27:48

is how these suicides, these mass murder

27:51

suicides, they continued a

27:53

year later. And we're going to hear about that in a moment.

27:56

But first, please stick around

27:58

for a quick outbreak. Hey,

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and in-app. Hey,

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welcome back. Before the break,

30:25

we just made our way through mass motor

30:27

suicide number three. And

30:29

now, just a few months after

30:31

the deaths in Switzerland, 27-year-old

30:34

Patrick Vornet, the ski fashionaire

30:36

who was the one who posted

30:38

de Mambro's letters, he gave an

30:40

interview with a French magazine called Les Espress

30:43

and publicly renounced his faith in the

30:45

Sola Temple. And he said this,

30:49

what I thought was true is false,

30:51

and I failed to recognize that. So

30:54

I've burned all of my capes and got rid of

30:56

all of my papers. That's

30:58

what he said, but it turns out he wasn't really telling

31:00

the truth. Instead,

31:02

he was in constant contact with another member of

31:05

the cult, a 50-year-old

31:07

Swiss psychotherapist named Christianne

31:09

Bonnet. This woman

31:11

claimed that she could communicate with Joret

31:13

and de Mambro in the afterlife as

31:15

a medium. And

31:17

one journalist who had actually interviewed Bonnet,

31:19

he called her a fanatic, totally committed

31:22

to the OTS's ideology. And

31:24

the police who'd interviewed her after the deaths,

31:26

after all the mass suicides, they

31:29

noted that she'd acted cold,

31:31

distant, and contemptuous, denying

31:33

that she'd known anything about the deaths.

31:37

But unknown to police, a

31:39

loose affiliation of underground survivors

31:41

had coalesced around Christianne Bonnet,

31:43

and she was advocating that

31:45

they too join the group

31:48

on Sirius. Then

31:50

in early December of 1995, these members all

31:53

received a call from Bonnet with a

31:55

message from de Mambro. It's

31:58

officially our turn, she told them. We'll

32:00

be called to transit very soon.

32:03

Get ready. Patrick

32:05

Vornat was one of the 16 who responded to

32:07

this call. He disappeared from Geneva,

32:10

where he lived, and he drove to France

32:12

with his mother, Edith, and

32:14

his girlfriend, Yuta, and Yuta's

32:16

six-year-old daughter, Tania. Another

32:19

man to respond was a French policeman

32:21

named Jean-Pierre Ladantier. He

32:23

had joined the cult in 1990, and

32:26

DiMambo allegedly considered him the group's enforcer. This

32:28

man is also about to serve as the

32:30

group's executioner, so I'm going to give him

32:32

a bit of context. I

32:35

found some information on this guy, and

32:37

apparently he was heavily in debt, and

32:39

he was described by people as being

32:41

dull and withdrawn. He actually

32:43

also told Christiana Bonnet that he

32:46

could facilitate the group's transit to Sirius,

32:48

meaning that he could supply

32:50

some police service weapons and

32:52

execute people. On

32:55

the night of December 15, Bonnet made a

32:57

series of personal calls to members, and

32:59

one by one they dropped everything and headed

33:02

to France. One man,

33:04

André Fridley, left work early, claiming that

33:06

he was sick. As

33:08

it turns out, he would later collaborate with

33:10

Jean-Pierre in the murders. André's

33:12

wife also left work early, and her co-workers

33:15

noticed that she seemed worried. Four

33:17

of these members left behind suicide notes at their

33:19

homes. Bonnet's note was unique.

33:22

She didn't write much. She just left a

33:24

blank sheet of paper with a single line scrawled across

33:26

the middle. Blank page,

33:28

everything said. Alongside

33:31

it, she left a letter addressed to her son,

33:33

writing, "'Death does not exist and

33:35

is pure illusion. May we always

33:37

find ourselves through the inner life.'" By

33:40

10pm that evening, all 16 members

33:43

had gathered in the village of

33:45

Saint-Pierre-de-Charnay, nestled in the Veracost Mountains.

33:48

Again, there are probably some of you who speak

33:50

French, and you're like, that's not how you pronounce

33:52

it. And you're right, apologies. Anyway,

33:55

from there, they drove up the narrow winding

33:57

roads to the Fars plateau. Finally,

34:00

they parked their cars along the road and set

34:02

off into the forest on foot. They

34:05

walked about 1.5km in the dark,

34:07

and I think this would have been hard. It

34:11

was mid-winter, cold and drizzling. The

34:13

forest is really rocky. When you look at photos

34:16

of it now, like crime scene photos, there's these

34:18

big boulders and just sort of all these rocks

34:20

jutting out of the ground, so lots of stuff

34:22

to trip on. And really

34:24

hard, given that they had three young children with them, aged

34:26

6, 4 and 2. I

34:30

assume the two-year-old got carried the whole way.

34:33

Eventually, the group reached a small clearing with a

34:35

hollow in the middle. And there, they

34:37

built a fire and they sat in a circle. And

34:40

then each member swallowed a heavy dose of

34:42

sedatives. Once this

34:45

circle of members had fallen unconscious, Jean-Pierre

34:48

and André carried out the killings. The

34:52

two men shot each person at point-blank range. Each

34:55

adult received a 22-caliber shot to the head and

34:57

then another one to the heart. And

34:59

another heartbreaking detail here involving kids.

35:02

Investigators suspect that the mothers with young

35:05

children tried to resist once they realised

35:07

their kids were probably about to

35:09

die. Both mothers were

35:11

found with skull fractures, likely from being

35:13

struck with blunt objects. In

35:16

the end, Jean-Pierre killed his own wife and

35:18

his daughters, aged 4 and 2. Patrick

35:21

Vornet's partner, Uta Verona, was also

35:23

killed, along with her 6-year-old daughter.

35:27

Once everyone was dead, petrol was poured all

35:29

over the bodies. Then there was

35:31

set alight before each executioner shot themselves

35:33

in the head with the service revolver.

35:35

André fell into the fire while Jean-Pierre

35:37

slumped face down in the dirt. And

35:40

then it was quiet and these

35:43

bodies smolted in the rain. And

35:45

they lay there for all the next week

35:47

while the French and Swiss authorities started to

35:49

receive a tired of missing person reports. By

35:53

late December, someone leaked to the media that

35:56

the police were investigating

35:58

another cult-linked mass destruction. appearance,

36:01

and the story became front page news. And

36:04

then on the 22nd of December, a hunter from

36:06

the village saw a news item on the TV,

36:09

and recalled that he'd seen several cars with

36:11

Swiss number plates parked near the forest. He'd

36:15

also been out in the forest, and he'd got a

36:17

strange whiff of a smell that he described like burnt

36:19

leather or human flesh. Like

36:23

death. Based

36:25

on this, he called the police, who drove out

36:27

to the village to find several cars that were

36:29

quickly identified as belonging to temple members. Fearing

36:32

the worst, they closed the roads and

36:34

brought in hundreds of police, several canine

36:36

units and a helicopter to start a

36:38

search. And finally at

36:40

9am the following morning, just two days

36:42

before Christmas, the bodies of the 16

36:45

temple members and their children were found in

36:47

the clearing. There are lots

36:49

of photos of this clearing on the internet. I

36:52

think the best ones are on Getty, if you'd like to have a look.

36:55

And what you'll see is a small heap

36:57

of ash in a pine forest. The

37:00

bodies have been removed, but the ground is all

37:02

burned and scraped up, and the

37:04

weather looks miserable, and the investigators are

37:06

all wearing heavy jackets. There's

37:08

lots of media too. Dozens of people

37:11

holding big 90s analog cameras,

37:13

and everyone looks pretty grim. And

37:16

looking at this scene, you get a sense of

37:18

how dense and wet the forest is. And

37:21

for me it just brings home, again, the

37:23

horror of these people trudging out there in

37:26

the dark, knowing that they were about

37:28

to die. Or in many cases, not

37:30

knowing they were about to die. Feeling uneasy.

37:34

As before, it's unknown how many members

37:36

thought this was a one-way trip. I

37:39

said before that four of them left suicide

37:41

notes. So at least four of them. But

37:44

remember this survivor named Terry? His

37:46

personal theory was that this four, they were

37:48

the only ones who thought it was a

37:50

suicide. Terry actually said

37:52

that the other ones, they'd likely been

37:54

duped into thinking that they were headed

37:56

to a kind of seance to see

37:58

D'Mambo reappear. the forest. He

38:01

thought that this was the only way

38:04

that so many of them would have

38:06

quickly dropped everything they were doing and

38:08

traveled so quickly. These Solar Temple massacres,

38:11

they always followed the same pattern. There

38:14

were a few fanatical members driving the

38:16

bloodshed with the others kind of

38:18

blundering into a trap. I

38:21

asked at the start of the show how

38:24

these things go down. That was

38:26

sort of the premise I gave

38:28

for the episode. And I think

38:30

really the headline here, the answer,

38:32

is via coercion. A

38:34

kind of peer pressure takes hold. And

38:37

it's hard in these situations, these sort

38:39

of mass suicide, ritualized

38:42

death situations. Maybe

38:44

it's even sacrilegious to resist, or

38:47

that people who do resist, they

38:49

just get beaten or they're shot. The only

38:51

silver lining here is that finally

38:54

there are some people in this story,

38:57

in this enormous chronology, who did

38:59

resist. And they actually survived.

39:02

Not at this scene in 1995, but two years later in 1997. And

39:07

they were teenage children of

39:10

some Canadian members who told their parents

39:12

that they didn't want to die. And

39:15

these survivors, these people, they're

39:17

still alive today. So now

39:20

we're going to discuss the fifth and

39:22

final mass murder suicide right now. Remember

39:25

the first was the couple in Quebec with the baby.

39:28

And then there were the two in Switzerland, one

39:30

in a chalet, and the other one beneath a

39:32

farmhouse. And then we've just had the one

39:34

in France in the forest. So we're

39:36

going to go back to Canada now, back to

39:38

Quebec. And this is the

39:40

last mass murder suicide in

39:43

1997. And it all started with

39:45

a French couple, Didier and

39:47

Chantal Quisée, aged

39:49

39 and 41 respectively.

39:52

They'd moved to Quebec to be closer to

39:54

Girard and they were apparently distraught when their

39:57

guru died without them. But

39:59

they're also a bit miffed. that they weren't

40:01

invited to transit to Sirius. They

40:04

were originally schoolteachers, but by 1997 they

40:06

were managing a bakery and practicing their

40:09

beliefs in secret. By

40:11

this point, the Solar Temple had been officially

40:13

banned by the government of Quebec, and

40:15

the couple had been interrogated by police

40:17

after the massacre at Morin Heights, along

40:20

with about 100 other members and former

40:22

members across Canada. But despite

40:24

their loyalty to the group, they weren't

40:26

exactly popular. Another member

40:28

described Didier as a know-it-all, while

40:31

his wife was described as kind

40:33

of passive and unassertive. Another

40:35

member described them as withdrawn, haughty and

40:37

bad-tempered, and the couple's three children, two

40:40

boys and a girl, aged between 13

40:42

and 16. They

40:44

were banned from joining sports teams, and according

40:47

to their classmates, they were rarely seen outside

40:49

the house, where they lived with their grandmother,

40:51

63-year-old Susanna Drow.

40:55

Didier was placed under police watch in July

40:57

1996, after

40:59

a rumour started up of an impending mass

41:02

suicide. And I actually

41:04

found an article quoting an investigator who visited

41:06

this couple and begged them, hey, if you

41:08

ever decide to do a transit, if this

41:10

rumour is true, please, just

41:13

don't take your kids. And

41:15

here's what he said Didier responded

41:17

with, When I met

41:19

them a second time, a few months before they

41:22

committed suicide, I begged them, please don't bring the

41:24

children with you. And they

41:26

sang me a beautiful song. I

41:28

guess this last bit is kind of

41:30

French-Canadian for they promised they wouldn't. But

41:33

on March 21, 1997,

41:36

two newspapers in Quebec received a letter

41:38

from Didier. And

41:40

just like De Mambros, it was headlined

41:42

Testament, and its message was basically the

41:44

same. We've had enough of this

41:47

life, we prefer to die. Something

41:50

I thought was interesting was that the way that

41:52

the letter threatened Terry the survivor,

41:54

it's got this little bit

41:56

here that says, as

41:58

for the pseudo-55s, remember his whole

42:01

thing was being about this 54th survivor.

42:04

As for the pseudo-54th, he

42:06

should know that the welcoming committee is waiting

42:08

for him. However,

42:11

surprisingly, none of the newspapers published this letter.

42:13

They all thought it was a hoax. But

42:15

what they didn't know was that the night

42:17

before, this couple, Didier and Chantal, they

42:20

had drugged their kids by giving them

42:22

juice laced with sedatives. The

42:25

parents then set up an elaborate mechanism

42:27

involving propane tanks, gas canisters, stoves, and

42:29

a timer all designed to set fire

42:32

to the house. But

42:34

on the early morning of the 21st, one

42:37

of the teens woke up to the stink

42:39

of gas. She patted

42:41

through the house to find her dad unconscious, and

42:43

then stumbled upon the set up that was

42:45

meant to burn the house down. It

42:48

hadn't worked, it just hadn't gone off. So

42:50

this kid, this 13 year old girl,

42:52

she's shocked and unsure what to think,

42:54

but she woke up her siblings and

42:56

the three of them quickly took action.

42:59

They aired out the house, they shut off

43:01

the propane, and they dismantled the set up,

43:03

all while their parents remained asleep. When

43:06

the adults finally woke up, they were confronted

43:08

by the kids. And at first Chantal reassured

43:10

them that they weren't going to try to

43:12

kill them ever again. But Didier

43:14

contradicted her, saying that

43:16

maybe they would try again, but

43:19

with one change. The kids could

43:21

decide for themselves whether they wanted to join

43:23

or not. And apparently the girl went

43:26

along with it, but was talked out of it by her

43:28

brother. And the rest of

43:30

the day was spent nursing the adults, who

43:32

apparently weakened sick from a mixture of sedatives

43:34

and propane inhalation. Later

43:37

that day, the school principal called the house

43:39

concerned about the kids' absence, and the eldest

43:41

boy answered, and claimed that his siblings were

43:43

sick and needed care. That

43:46

night, thinking that the adults were too ill

43:48

to try again, the kids went to sleep.

43:51

But what they didn't know was that Didier

43:53

had already drugged them again by hiding sedatives

43:55

in their food. And

43:57

during the night, Didier suffocated his mother

43:59

in a law with a plastic bag,

44:01

apparently with her consent, and

44:04

tried to restart the ignition system. It

44:06

just seems like he was desperate. He had this

44:08

plan, he wanted to make this transit to Sirius

44:11

and nothing was going to stop him, even

44:13

the pleas of his teenage kids. But

44:16

again, by some miracle, he couldn't get this

44:18

device to work. He couldn't get the timer

44:21

to line up, just like the thing wouldn't

44:23

go off. Again, the teenagers woke up

44:25

to find their dad trying to get this thing to

44:27

start and they were all like, no,

44:29

absolutely not. And then

44:31

they spent the morning pleading with their parents

44:33

to just please stop. But

44:36

Didier insisted that there was no turning

44:39

back after his mother-in-law's death. He

44:41

and Chantel once again asked the kids

44:44

if they would join them. And

44:46

this time, all three of them

44:48

refused. At this point, the

44:50

parents relented. They would allow their

44:52

kids to live just so long as they

44:54

didn't interfere with their parents' transit. So

44:57

the compromise was that the kids had to all

44:59

be drugged and sent to a shed out in

45:02

the garden while the parents burned down the house.

45:05

But again, a third time, the

45:07

kids woke up in this shed to

45:09

find the parents' house still intact. So

45:12

they wanted inside to find their parents even

45:14

sicker than before, but still determined. And

45:17

the kids begged their mum and dad to stop. But

45:19

now their mum insisted that these kids,

45:22

they were actually responsible and they would

45:24

need to set the house on fire

45:26

once the parents were asleep. By

45:30

late afternoon, they complied. The

45:32

parents took themselves into the upstairs

45:34

rooms and the kids manually started

45:36

the fire before retreating to the

45:39

shed with some personal items and,

45:41

quote, some memories of their

45:43

parents. At around

45:45

6pm, firefighters arrived to find the house

45:47

fully ablaze and they extinguished the fire

45:50

within an hour. And

45:52

inside, they found four charred bodies

45:54

in the master room arranged in

45:56

a crucifix formation with rose petals

45:58

scattered around. The grandmother's

46:00

body was found on the first floor, and

46:03

police investigators quickly observed that the

46:05

ignition set up resembled devices that

46:07

had been used in earlier, cult-related

46:09

incidents. As

46:11

firefighters worked, the teenagers emerged from

46:13

the garden's shed, disorientated, and still

46:15

high. They were taken in

46:18

from medical evaluation and questioned by police. Later,

46:21

they were made to identify their parents' bodies, which

46:23

they made the youngest son do. According

46:26

to police, after learning of the death

46:28

of their parents, only the eldest son

46:30

cried. The children

46:32

were questioned by police, and they

46:34

said they didn't remember what had happened exactly, likely

46:36

due to the drugs. While

46:39

awaiting the decision as to whether they'd be charged,

46:41

their schoolmates wrote them letters and recorded them a

46:43

video. They were later allowed

46:45

to contact their classmates, but not allowed to

46:47

discuss what had happened. On

46:49

the 24th of April, the Quebec Ministry of

46:52

Justice stated that they weren't going to

46:54

press criminal charges against the kids, even

46:56

though they were responsible for their parents' deaths.

46:59

But responsibility was mitigated by the fact that

47:01

they had been drugged, while quote, And

47:15

that's the story. So they got off.

47:19

And it seems likely to me that these same teenagers from the

47:21

1997 incident are now probably

47:25

adults living quiet lives in Quebec.

47:28

And a really weird little coincidence happened on

47:30

the same day as the Quebec suicide. And

47:33

that is that the members of a

47:35

completely unrelated cult, called Heaven's Gate, began

47:37

a mass suicide in California. Both

47:40

groups shared similar beliefs, particularly around

47:43

the idea that suicide could somehow

47:45

lead to interstellar salvation. But

47:47

Heaven's Gate had timed their deaths to

47:50

coincide with the Haley Bop Comet, while

47:53

the latest casualties of the Solar Temple, they died

47:55

on March 22, simply because their incendiary

47:57

device failed three times earlier.

47:59

So, there was no correlation.

48:02

It was just one of those weird, cosmic,

48:05

random acts of chance that lined

48:07

up these two mass suicides, not

48:09

so far away from each other on exactly the same

48:12

date. And that was the final

48:14

event that marked the end of the Order

48:16

of the Sulla Temple. In

48:18

total, the cult claimed the lives of 74 people.

48:22

And as you'd expect, the fallout stretched on

48:24

for years, and especially in the courts. One

48:27

prominent figure caught up in the legal

48:29

mass was a well-known Swiss orchestra conductor

48:31

and an associate of D'Mambro. He

48:34

faced trial for his alleged role in the deaths,

48:36

but was acquitted due to insufficient evidence. A

48:39

second trial in France ended the same way,

48:41

another acquittal. I

48:43

actually found this guy. He's got a website, and I

48:45

emailed him to see if he'd come on the show.

48:49

I never heard back. Throughout

48:51

the late 90s and early 2000s, a

48:54

flurry of biographies and accounts from survivors came

48:56

out, all in French. This

48:58

case, as I said at the very beginning, it's

49:00

never really broken into the English-speaking world. So,

49:03

unless you can read French, these books kind of

49:05

remain out of reach. But,

49:08

interestingly, there were

49:10

some connections to Australia. I was surprised

49:12

to find that after the cult's collapse,

49:15

Australian authorities started investigating visa

49:17

and banking records. And

49:20

it was reported, although disputed, that the

49:22

cult had managed to funnel two deposits

49:24

of $93 million into Australian

49:26

bank accounts during the early 90s. But

49:30

really interesting, I think, was a claim of

49:32

ritual suicides that had happened in

49:35

Australia. One Solar

49:37

Temple member actually sent a letter that

49:39

mentioned several deaths on March

49:41

31, 1993, and

49:44

another on January 6, 1994,

49:47

in Sydney. However, I couldn't

49:50

find any records of bodies or

49:52

any incidences matching those claims on

49:54

those dates, so it's unclear

49:56

if these were real or just part of the

49:58

cult's propaganda. What is

50:00

confirmed though is that the cult definitely

50:02

owned property in Australia and they even

50:04

held rituals at the base of Uluru.

50:07

D'Manbrough himself spent about six months in Australia

50:09

from November 1993 to April of 1994

50:14

and we know this because of visa records. Also

50:16

records show that he rented a house on the Gold Coast

50:19

and Girat he also travelled to Australia several

50:21

times with immigration records showing that he visited

50:23

at least five times between 1989 and his

50:25

death in 1994. So

50:30

I found all of this stuff about how D'Manbrough

50:32

lived in a house on the Gold Coast and

50:34

Girat they used to hang out here and Uluru

50:37

and stuff. I found all of this stuff in

50:39

an article in the LA Times and

50:41

I even actually managed to track down a Gold

50:43

Coast car rental agent who'd been quoted in a

50:46

1994 LA Times article and the

50:49

quote was that he described Girat

50:51

as being calm and charismatic. So

50:55

I found this guy, managed to track him

50:57

down but unfortunately he couldn't remember much beyond

50:59

that and it ended up

51:01

being a bit of a dead end.

51:03

But still kind of interesting to imagine

51:05

D'Manbrough laying low after Girat's arrest and

51:08

just hanging out on the Gold Coast you know possibly doing

51:10

a bit of time at SeaWorld. I

51:13

don't know I feel like 1993 would have been

51:15

peak SeaWorld. But

51:17

anyway what do we learn? What

51:20

have we learned here? Well I think

51:22

that I've learned that most people aren't

51:25

willing to die for their beliefs.

51:28

Most people live on a sliding scale

51:31

of belief and when it comes

51:33

down to it most of us, most of us

51:35

have to be coerced at gunpoint to die. That's

51:38

what happened in Jonestown and it's what happened for

51:40

most of the members of the Solar Temple. But

51:45

let's like drill down into that a bit further

51:47

because really that's unsurprising like most people aren't going

51:49

to die for their beliefs but

51:51

some people are you know there are people who

51:53

are willing to do that and

51:56

these are the fanatics and

51:58

this fraction of the general population

52:00

who placed in a cult situation

52:02

are willing to die for whatever

52:05

they believe in, they're weird.

52:08

But here's the thing. I

52:11

don't think fanatics

52:13

know their fanatics until

52:16

they find themselves placed in the

52:18

right culty conditions.

52:21

When I think about this, I'm actually reminded of a

52:23

documentary that I saw in HBO about the cult

52:26

Nixxiom. Do you remember

52:28

this one? So it's called

52:30

The Vow. And there was an

52:32

interview with a Canadian actress named Sarah

52:34

Edmondson, who joined the cult. She

52:36

actually became the leader of the

52:39

Canadian branch of Nixxiom. So

52:41

she was in the HBO documentary. And she's also

52:43

got a TED talk where she talks about why

52:45

anyone can be indoctrinated. And she says this,

52:49

you're not immune to cultic influence. No

52:52

one is. And I know some of

52:54

you are thinking that it'll never happen to me. But

52:57

if you think that you're not susceptible,

52:59

you're more susceptible than you know, because

53:01

this stuff isn't obvious. Have

53:04

you ever had a boss ask you to work

53:06

late on weekends, asking you to prove your commitment

53:08

to the company and you felt like you couldn't

53:11

say no? Or if you

53:13

had a significant other text you constantly and

53:15

love bomb you and made you feel special

53:17

only for them to ghost you and have

53:19

you question your own worth? Or

53:22

have you been part of a demanding social group and

53:24

you knew that if you missed even one night, you

53:26

might be on the outs for a while. It

53:29

could be anything from a group of

53:31

college friends to a book club. And

53:33

remember, it doesn't matter how rational and

53:35

skeptical you are. You're all

53:38

susceptible because

53:40

everyone's got something. Everyone

53:42

has a hook. And

53:45

I totally agree with her after

53:47

spending a few weeks of my life reading up

53:49

on the solar temple. I just

53:51

get the feeling that there's no one single thing

53:54

that makes people die for their beliefs. Instead,

53:57

it seems to be kind of like a medley

53:59

of humor. human insecurities manipulated.

54:03

And I'll even go so far as to say that I've

54:05

kind of seen this myself. I

54:08

think some of the

54:11

most religious people I know are the

54:14

ones who in my eyes

54:16

have this unique combination of kind

54:19

of insecurity, but then also people

54:21

who ask the biggest questions. You

54:24

know, they're the ones who get really deep,

54:26

really fast, and they want to

54:28

have conversations with strangers about the nature of

54:31

reality and existence of an afterlife. And I

54:33

think it's this kind of thing where sometimes

54:35

the people who want the most answers, who

54:38

can be even more vulnerable to

54:40

cult indoctrination. But

54:42

there's a little bit of that in all of

54:44

us, I think, which is why, again, I think

54:47

all of us, including myself, we're all vulnerable. Given

54:50

the right cult message at the right time, if

54:52

I was in a sort of period of spiritual

54:54

emptiness, I'm sure I'd go for it. And

54:57

why? Because I'm human. And

55:00

I just want to feel part of something big, you

55:02

know, something meaningful. But

55:04

I really like to think that

55:06

I wouldn't be willing to kill for

55:09

that desire. Today's

55:12

episode was produced by Rachel Tuffrey. It

55:14

was mixed by Jimmy Saunders, and he

55:17

also did our theme music. Darcy Humphries

55:19

and Daniella Cantu are our interns. Our

55:22

cover art is by Naomi Lee Beverage. And

55:24

this whole thing has been a super

55:26

real production. This

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is a mini meditation guided by

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