Word: cult
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...there are few clues and even less hard evidence to suggest who might be responsible. But in the popular mind, the leading suspect is Aum Shinrikyo, the apocalyptic cult whose messianic leader, Shoko Asahara, has eluded a nationwide police hunt since the subway attacks two weeks ago. Although no legal proof links Aum to either case, the circumstantial evidence is mounting dramatically...
...shooting, anonymous callers telephoned TV stations to warn that more police officials would be harmed if the investigation of Aum was not called off. But if the assault was meant to intimidate authorities, there were no signs of anyone backing off. All week investigators continued to dig into the cult's compounds in a rural village near Mount Fuji. According to a police spokesman, the investigators were gathering evidence that sect leaders planned to make poison gas "in preparation for murder,'' the closest that authorities have come to implicating Aum. Police unearthed tons of suspect chemicals, drugs and apparatuses...
...YEARS AGO, JAMES ELLROY picked up a copy of Libra, Don DeLillo's 1988 fictional meditation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. At the time, Ellroy was a writer with a growing cult reputation; his crime novels, set in his native Los Angeles--The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential--had shown up on paperback best-seller lists and inspired much chatter among mystery fans: here was a guy who had pushed the genre way, way past hardboiled, into the realm of the terminally scalded. Ellroy seemed set on a path toward at least a shot...
...Cult Investigations Continue...
...Japanese police pressed their investigation of the March 20 nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway, an assassination attempt was made on the head of the National Police Agency. The focus of the probe, as well as the target of rising public suspicion, remained the Aum Shinrikyo cult. A raid on the group's holiest shrine revealed a hidden factory equipped with sophisticated chemical-production devices. Cult leader Shoko Asahara remained in hiding, while followers protested their innocence...