Joseph Di Mambro

Joseph Di Mambro
Di Mambro at Brisbane Airport, 1993
Born
Joseph Léonce Di Mambro

(1924-08-19)19 August 1924
Died5 October 1994(1994-10-05) (aged 70)
Salvan, Valais, Switzerland
Cause of deathSuicide
OrganizationOrder of the Solar Temple
Spouse
Unknown
(m. 1944, divorced)
Hélène Ghersi
(m. 1966, divorced)
Joselyne Duplessis
(m. 1977; death 1994)
Children5

Joseph Léonce Di Mambro (19 August 1924 – 5 October 1994) was a French religious leader who founded and led the Order of the Solar Temple with Luc Jouret. Di Mambro had been associated with a variety of esoteric groups before founding OTS. He was previously convicted of several counts of fraud, including impersonation of a psychiatrist, leading him to flee France in the 1970s. He founded the Solar Temple with Jouret in 1984. He committed suicide in the Swiss village of Salvan on 5 October 1994 as part of a mass murder–suicide.

Following stressors within the group, including Jouret's arrest for directing members to illegally buy silencers in Canada, Di Mambro and Jouret became increasingly paranoid, and the group's ideological concept of "transiting" to another dimension would grow more prominent. He then died of poison he injected into himself, alongside 24 other members in Salvan. While Jouret was considered by the public to be the figurehead of the group, Di Mambro was the true head of the organization.