A French appeals court acquitted a Swiss orchestra conductor Wednesday of charges of criminal involvement in a doomsday cult that lost scores of members in ritual killings in France, Switzerland and Canada.
A Swiss orchestra conductor went on trial for the second time yesterday for his alleged role in a doomsday cult which lost dozens of members in ritual killings in Canada and Europe.
A Swiss orchestra conductor went on trial again Tuesday for his alleged role in a doomsday cult that lost scores of members in ritual deaths in France, Switzerland and Canada. Mr. Tabachnik is accused of contributing to the deaths of members of the Switzerland-based Order of the Solar Temple cult.
Franco-Swiss conductor Michel Tabachnik is due to go back on trial in France on Tuesday, four years after he was acquitted of conspiring to brainwash 74 members of the Solar Temple doomsday cult into accepting death by occult ritual.
On This Day in 1994: The bodies of 48 cult members have been discovered by Swiss police following an apparent mass suicide. Twenty-three of the bodies were found in a concealed chamber beneath a remote farmhouse in the village of Cheiry, 48 miles north-east of Geneva. A further 25 bodies, including some children, were recovered in three burnt-out chalets in Granges-sur-Salvan, 47 miles east of Geneva, near the Italian border. The deaths have been linked to the apocalyptical Order of the Solar Temple sect, which was founded in 1984 by Dr Luc Jouret and Joseph di Mambro. The Order of
GRENOBLE, France (AP) – A French prosecutor’s office rejected a request to reopen an investigation into the 1995 murder-suicide of 16 members of the Order of the Solar Temple doomsday group, a lawyer said Thursday. The Grenoble prosecutor’s office said there was no new evidence to justify reopening the inquiry, said Alain Leclerc, a lawyer who had made the request on behalf of the families of some of the victims. In 1995, French police discovered the charred remains of 14 victims, including three children, in a forest clearing near Grenoble in the French Alps. The 14 bodies were arranged in
GRENOBLE, France (Reuters) – A fresh legal bid to convict a Swiss orchestra conductor of involvement in the ritualistic deaths of 16 cult members in 1995 has been adjourned by a French court. Michel Tabachnik was cleared in June 2001 after judges ruled there was insufficient evidence he helped set up the suicides of 16 followers of the Order of the Solar Temple sect, but victims’ families appealed against his acquittal. The Solar Temple gained worldwide notoriety after 74 of its members were found dead in woods in France, Switzerland and Canada between 1994 and 1997. The dead were mostly
GRENOBLE, France, Sept 22 (AFP) – A French court Monday delayed until June the trial on appeal of a Franco-Swiss conductor, Michel Tabachnik, suspected of helping to brainwash 74 members of the Solar Temple doomsday cult who died in the 1990s. The second trial of Tabachnik, 60, which was due to start Monday, was brought by prosecutors who appealed his acquittal in an earlier trial in June 2001. It was delayed Monday to June 14 at the request of two lawyers for some of the dead members’ families, as a criminal investigation has been launched against the main psychiatric expert
Excerpt from report by French Europe 1 radio on 19 September We have a very moving account, as you will hear, from Alain Vuarnet, whose brother and mother were among the victims of the Order of the Solar Temple . The Vuarnet family have had fresh tests carried out and say they are convinced that it
Switzerland: Firefighters find 23 bodies in a remote farmhouse and 25 more in three Alps chalets. Victims were apparently members of a sect led by a fugitive Canadian. Volunteer firefighters responding to a farmhouse fire in this tiny village early Wednesday uncovered an underground chapel and the robe-clad bodies of 23 people, members of an obscure cult joined in an apparent murder-suicide by 25 other adherents in three chalets 100 miles away. The 48 grisly deaths were caused variously by suffocation, gunshots and perhaps drug overdoses, police said. The victims included French, Swiss and Canadian citizens, ranging in age from