| 1995 Vercors massacre | |
|---|---|
| Location | Well of Hell, near Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes, Isère, France |
| Coordinates | 45°05′40″N 5°30′00″E / 45.0945°N 5.5000°E |
| Date | December 16, 1995 |
Attack type | Mass shooting, mass murder-suicide |
| Weapons |
|
| Deaths | 16 (including the perpetrators) |
| Perpetrators | Orchestrator Christiane Bonet Shooters
|
| Motive | Theological concept of "transit" to Sirius |
| Judge | Luc Fontaine |
On the morning of 16 December 1995, 16 members of the cult the Order of the Solar Temple died in a mass murder-suicide in a clearing in the Vercors, near the village of Saint-Pierre-de-Chérennes in Isère, France. Two members of the group, Jean-Pierre Lardanchet and André Friedli, shot and killed 14 other members of the cult, including three children, before setting the bodies on fire and killing themselves. This was done in order to facilitate a spiritual voyage to the star Sirius, a "transit", as it had been in previous mass suicides.
This was the second mass murder-suicide associated with the group, following the 1994 mass murder-suicide, which had killed 53 members of the group, including both of its leaders, Joseph Di Mambro and Luc Jouret. Following this initial transit, the OTS was believed to be defunct, but was actually secretly continued by Christiane Bonet, a devoted member of the group. Bonet claimed that she could communicate with Jouret and Di Mambro in the afterlife as a medium, and gathered together the remaining OTS members, who would regularly meet together. In accordance with the previous writings of the OTS, she soon began to orchestrate a second "transit".
On the 15th of December, 1995, the members all received a call from Bonet, after which they abruptly left their jobs and families and drove to an isolated clearing in the Vercors called the Well of Hell. According to the standard hypothesis, the members were then drugged, before Jean-Pierre Lardanchet and André Friedli shot and killed them, including in Lardanchet's case his own children, before setting the bodies alight. They then shot themselves. Several of those killed were likely unaware of the transit plans and had not consented in dying, though others had, and left notes behind declaring their intentions and desires in death. The bodies were found a week later following a missing persons investigation.
The case became a media sensation. Following the case, composer Michel Tabachnik was tried for allegedly having known of the massacres before and influenced the followers into death via his writings. He was acquitted in two trials in 2001 and 2006. The precise sequence of events is controversial, and various theories sprung up alleging outside involvement, though none have ever been substantiated. Further conspiracy theories were also propagated. The case, and the Solar Temple as a whole, inflamed the fight against cults in France.