16 Bodies Found in French Alps; Cult Ritual Suspected

On a remote, forested plateau in the French Alps, police on Saturday found 16 charred bodies, most arranged in a star formation around a campfire, in an apparent mass suicide by the same doomsday cult that led 53 people to their deaths in eerily similar rituals last year.

The bodies, three of them children, were found after a massive hunt that followed the disappearance of 16 members of the sect, the Order of the Solar Temple, in Switzerland and France and the discovery of some of their cars parked in the area.

Although officials said positive identifications will take some time, the dead were believed to include two French policemen, two architects, a nurse, and the wife and son of Jean Vuarnet, France’s 1960 Olympic downhill ski champion.

“It looks like some kind of collective suicide,” said Jean-Francois Lorans, the public prosecutor in the region, near Grenoble in eastern France. “The bodies are in a site that is hard to get to, in a position that suggests some bizarre ritual.”

In fact, the ritual appeared to be a carbon copy of the deaths, 14 months earlier, of other members of the cult, including its two leaders and their families, in Switzerland and Canada. All had died elaborately planned deaths, by stabbing, asphyxiation, shooting and poisoning.

Swiss authorities had discovered the bodies of 48 people in a farm and three chalets, all of which had been set on fire. Five more bodies, including that of an infant who had been stabbed to death, were found in a burned house belonging to a cult leader in Canada’s Quebec province.

Although the main leaders of the cult perished in those rituals, surviving members were said to have regretted that they had been left behind. Canadian police have said the group’s membership rolls contain 576 names from, among other countries, Britain, the United States and Australia.

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Swiss and French authorities had expected the worst early last week, when the cult members, half from Switzerland and half from France, were reported missing. In searches of homes and meeting places used by the group, Swiss police discovered several handwritten notes suggesting mass suicide.

“Death does not exist, it is pure illusion,” one of the notes said. “May we, by our inner life, find each other forever.” In another, a cult member expressed a desire to “see another world.”

Last year, in a letter delivered after their death to cult experts, the sect leaders said they were “leaving this Earth to find a new dimension of truth and absolution, far from the hypocrisies of this world.”

The hunt escalated Thursday after French police found the abandoned car of Edith Vuarnet, wife of the French ski champion and sunglasses tycoon, near a discotheque in a Geneva suburb on the French side of the border.

About 500 French police had joined the search by Friday, and several more cars of missing sect members were found in the parking lot of a cross-country skiing center. Several of those cars were equipped with children’s car seats.

A police helicopter spotted the burned bodies Saturday morning on the vast Vercors plateau, an area so remote that it was used as a hide-out by French Resistance fighters in World War II. The site, which had apparently been cleared by the group, was a mile from the abandoned cars. A team of bomb experts was sent Saturday to check the automobiles.

Authorities said they believe the dead include Edith Vuarnet as well as her son, Patrick, who was arrested last year after he mailed suicide letters for his fellow cult members on the day their deaths were discovered. He was never charged with a crime. Patrick Vuarnet’s Swiss girlfriend and her 6-year-old daughter are missing.

Police said they are not sure what the causes of death were, but weapons were found nearby.

“Flammable products were used,” said Lorans, the prosecutor. “It is possible, though, that other means were used in a kind of collective suicide.” He said it was too early to say whether anyone other than the victims had assisted in the deaths. No arrest warrants were immediately issued.

Fourteen of the 16 bodies were arranged in a star pattern, with their feet facing the fire, police said.

The group is said to give great importance to the sun, and cult experts say the star formation and the charred remains suggest a desire to die in the shape of the sun, purified by fire. Investigators have said the ritual in 1994 was designed to take sect members through fire to a new world on a planet called “Sirius.”

Some former members say the sect used to gather at around the time of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, which would have been Thursday night. Investigators say they are not sure of the day or time of the deaths.

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After seeing the bodies, Andre Romey, mayor of the tiny nearby village of St.-Pierre-de-Cherennes, said, “It was a painful, overwhelming sight. Ours is a small, tranquil tourist village. We don’t deserve this kind of publicity.”

At a news conference in Geneva, Urs Rechsteiner, head of the Swiss security police, said it would take days, if not weeks, to identify the bodies. And, he added, “this is an enormous drama for a certain number of families, especially in the Christmas period.”

The Order of the Solar Temple appears to trace its roots to the Knights Templar, a secretive medieval organization founded by French crusaders in Jerusalem, cult experts say.

Many of its members were well-to-do and respected figures in their communities. They ate in expensive restaurants in Switzerland, always paying cash. Some members were said to have given as much as $1 million to the cause, and the group owned expensive property in Switzerland and Canada.

There appeared to be two types of members--those who attended relatively tame, quasi-religious meetings in which environmentalism was a frequent topic, and a smaller group deeply immersed in ideology.

The devout group wore caps and gowns and worshiped in secret rooms. The victims in the Swiss farmhouse last year had been found in a basement room lined with mirrors, arranged in a circle with their feet facing an altar with a chalice and a rose.

Investigators have never been able to determine whether the deaths last year were murder or suicide. Some of the children appeared to have been drugged before being asphyxiated. Some of the adults had been shot in the head.