Luc Jouret | |
|---|---|
 Photo of Jouret, used to advertise a 1991 lecture | |
| Born | Luc Georges Marc Jean Jouret 18 October 1947 |
| Died | 5 October 1994 (aged 46) Salvan, Switzerland |
| Cause of death | Suicide |
| Occupation(s) | Founder, Order of the Solar Temple |
| Spouse |
Marie-Christine Pertué
(m. 1980–1985) |
| Children | 1 |
| Signature | |
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Luc Georges Marc Jean Jouret (French: [ʒuʁɛ]; 18 October 1947 – 5 October 1994) was a Belgian cult leader, doctor, and homeopath. Jouret founded the Order of the Solar Temple (OTS) with Joseph Di Mambro in 1984. He committed suicide in the Swiss village of Salvan on 5 October 1994 as part of a mass murder–suicide. While Di Mambro was the true leader of the group, Jouret was its outward image and primary recruiter.
Born in the Belgian Congo, Jouret was an athletic child, which he aimed to pursue in his later life. However following a period of sickness, he was unable to fulfill this goal, and instead he acquired a medical degree. Losing his faith in modern medicine due to his sickness, he would shift from normal medicine to homeopathy and other kinds of alternative medicine, on which he would give lectures alongside New Age topics. He was known as an excellent public speaker. In 1981, he met Di Mambro, who he would become close to.
He was the group's public face, but in his role internal to the group, he was subservient to Di Mambro. Following stressors within the group, including Jouret's arrest for directing members to illegally buy silencers in Canada, he and Di Mambro became increasingly paranoid, and the group's ideological concept of "transiting" to another dimension would grow more prominent. Jouret, alongside another member, would kill the 23 members in Cheiry. He would then die of poison he injected into himself, alongside 24 other members in Salvan.