Word: salvan
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...members of the Order of the Solar Temple, an apocalyptic religious cult, in Switzerland and Canada two weeks ago. One question was answered: Luc Jouret, 46, the spiritual leader of the cult, was among those whose bodies were found in three burned ski chalets in Granges-sur-Salvan, east of Geneva. Jouret's charred remains, along with those of co-leader Joseph di Mambro, 70, were identified from dental records. The finding ended an international manhunt for the two men and left police to pull together from other sources basic facts about the Solar Temple, an organization that apparently milked...
...least five children were among the 53 who died in what Swiss and Canadian officials believe was mass murder followed by mass suicide. Jouret, a Belgian born in Zaire, and Di Mambro, a French Canadian, apparently were among the suicides. Twenty-five people died at Granges-sur-Salvan, 23 in a barn in the village of Cheiry and five in a chalet north of Montreal. The sites were set on fire with devices made from canisters of gasoline and butane and a phone- activated detonator...
According to the evidence uncovered last week, most of the victims at Cheiry were shot, and the killer or killers then drove to Granges-sur-Salvan . "Some of the victims at Cheiry had as many as eight bullet wounds in the head," said a forensic expert at the University of Lausanne's Institute for Legal Medicine, which handled the autopsies. "That hardly suggests suicide." Police found 52 spent shells scattered at the Cheiry death site and later discovered at Granges-sur-Salvan the 22-cal. pistol from which they had been fired. Canadian police said three of the five Quebec...
Many other signs pointed to murder. The gun that fired the fatal shots in Cheiry was gone. One of the victims had been given a powerful drug. Swiss police speculated that Jouret, Di Mambro or both oversaw the death ritual in Cheiry, drove to Salvan to direct the second stage and then fled. "If this is suicide," said Andre Thierrien, a fireman in Cheiry, "then someone must have given them a helping hand." In Salvan, fully packed bags were found in apartments that had been rented by victims, suggesting that some had expected to make conventional departures from town...
...villages, a tragedy that included apparent suicides and what local authorities described as "collective murder" made to appear as mass suicide. In a fire-damaged farmhouse in Cheiry, a village north of Geneva, police discovered 23 dead men and women wearing ceremonial vestments. Fifty miles away, in Granges-sur-Salvan, investigators found 25 additional bodies in three burned-out chalets. Many had bullet wounds indicative of point-blank execution. Almost simultaneously, Canadian authorities reported the death of five more suspected cult members near Montreal. Police are searching for the cult's two leaders, Luc Jouret, a Belgian homeopath who emigrated...