Extreme Evil - Taking Crime to the Next Level (True Crime)

by Ray Black

  Within a few hours, an already grieving America was to learn of a horrific mass suicide orchestrated by cult leader, Jim Jones. Under his guidance, 913 members of his cult The People’s Temple – the majority of them American citizens – prematurely ended their lives in what some have called a suicide pact and others a mass murder.

  HOLY ROLLERS

  Born in 1931 in Indiana, Jim Jones became fascinated with religion from an early age. He was later described by those who knew him in his early years as being a strange child who was morbidly obsessed with death. Some accounts refer to rumours that he regularly held funerals for small animals and that he once stabbed a cat to death. He was also an avid reader, studying the likes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin during his High School years. By the time he was sixteen years old, Jones had already become part of a local Pentecostal congregation known as the Gospel Tabernacle – whose members were scornfully referred to as ‘holy rollers’ by others in the community – and also believed that he had spiritual powers. He started to preach on street corners of mixed-race communities. He believed in equality regardless of race or social standing which were still perceived as radical notions at the time, but it was these values that would attract scores of people to his cult in years to come. In contradiction to his egalitarian principles, however, the young Jones quickly developed a strong belief that he was superior to others and began to think of himself as their leader. One early indication of this occurred when a friend refused to comply with his demands by leaving church early to go home; Jones took his father’s gun and shot at him.

  After he married Marceline Baldwin in 1949, other disturbing personality traits became noticeable. An insecure man, Jones developed a paranoid fear of being abandoned by those he loved, becoming jealous and highly emotional when his wife paid attention to anybody else. He also lost his faith, stating that the existence of poverty proved that there was no God. So vehement was he in this belief that he threatened to kill himself should his wife pray. This view had changed by 1952 when he learned that the teachings of the Methodists – the denomination followed by Marceline – were similar to his own values. He eventually became a Methodist preacher and, within a couple of years, was attracting considerable crowds to Pentecostal meetings in other churches. In 1956, his success resulted in the foundation of his own now-notorious church, The People’s Temple. The church advocated communalism and provided shelter and a soup kitchen for the needy. At around the same time, Jones and his wife adopted a black child and a Korean orphan as well as celebrating the birth of their own biological son in 1959. With the Cold War and America’s fear of Communism both constant concerns, Jones had a vision of an imminent nuclear attack and set about trawling the world for a safe location for his church. Following visits to Hawaii and Brazil, Jones visited Guyana and was impressed by its government’s socialist leanings. After moving his congregation from Indianapolis – where, for a while, he actually was Director of the Human Rights Commission – to California and his hypocrisy, thirst for power and extra-marital affairs resulting in the collapse of his family and a dramatically reduced following, Jones applied for affiliation with the Disciples of Christ, an organisation with 1.5 million members, in 1968. The request was accepted and, five years later, The People’s Temple’s flock had swelled to over 2,500 spanning San Francisco and Los Angeles.

  JONESTOWN

  In 1974, Jones made another application; this time to the Guyanese government for a 300-acre plot 140 miles from Georgetown. Again, his wish was granted and a commune that he named ‘Jonestown’ was founded. The Temple soon attracted criticism from the local Catholic Church, whose representatives were disgusted at the fake healings and so-called miracles that took place. Jones returned to the USA where it was said that he had members’ rubbish searched for information that he could incorporate into his phoney clairvoyance routines, while prospective members were carefully screened with those of a more conservative ethos rejected. Despite its supposed status as a socialist utopia, the growing cult was more like a dictatorship. Believing himself to be a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Jones manipulated his followers into pooling their incomes and surrendering their possessions through his Christian communalism teachings. In return, they received bed, board and a weekly allowance of $2, but he was the only authority figure and his staff were not permitted to question his plans. Further contradictions were evident in his teachings about sex; he was a keen believer in sexual freedom but was a staunch advocate of marriage; he claimed to be a devout heterosexual but privately sodomized a member of his church to prove that the man was homosexual. He was even arrested for lewd conduct in a known gay meeting place, although he successfully concealed this from his followers.

  The People’s Temple continued to grow, but attracted increasing criticism from outside. Jones used his increasing influence – which he obtained thanks to relationships with dominant political figures as well as money taken from his followers – to attempt to prevent this criticism from being published in the press. Jones was unable to keep all of these stories from reaching the awareness of the public, however. A notable instance was the defection of member, Grace Stoen, who left in protest at the severe beating of a fellow member who had condemned Jones and his teachings. The self-appointed Reverend responded by falsely claiming that Stoen’s son was his child and entered into a custody battle. Inevitably, this led to negative publicity for the Temple and it was this, along with his paranoia, that saw Jones hasten the preparations for moving his followers to Jonestown and towards the horrifying events that would result in their deaths.

  CONGRESSMAN LEO J. RYAN

  His status as a megalomaniac was confirmed on arrival in Guyana by the fact that members’ passports were confiscated in order to stop them from defecting from his twisted cult. Jones now had the dictatorship that he seemed to crave, although this was soon to be threatened with dreadful consequences when a delegation led by Congressman Leo J. Ryan visited the commune seeking answers about The People’s Temple. Following concerns raised by relatives of those who had moved with Jones to Guyana, Ryan had been conducting investigations into the cult for several months before his fateful trip to Jonestown. These included interviews with defectors, some of whom alleged that there had been brutal beatings, rehearsals for a mass suicide and even murders. Ryan’s visit clearly exasperated Jones, whose increasing paranoia resulted in a bloody denouement. One recording of Jones taken in the days approaching the congressman’s visit goes as far as announcing the impending massacre. ‘If by any chance you would make a mistake to try to come in and take any one of us, we will not let you, you will die, you will have to take anybody over all of our dead bodies,’ he preaches with a disconcerting urgency. In another recording, he says: ‘They won’t leave us alone. They’re now going back to tell more lies, which means more congressmen and there’s no way, no way we can survive.’

  Predictably, relations between the two sides were hostile and tense over the following days and things came to a head when Ryan himself was attacked by a Temple member, prompting the congressman and his group to beat a hasty retreat; fifteen defectors leaving with them. As they were boarding their plane at Port Kaituma airport at around 5pm, members of Jones’ cult arrived in a tractor and opened fire killing the politician, three members of the media and one defector. At about the same time, Jones gathered his followers together and told them of his ‘premonition’ that Ryan would be shot and that the political forces who had been hounding the Temple would respond by killing them all. The only answer, he concluded, was the mass ‘revolutionary suicide’ that they had chillingly rehearsed for. An audio recording of the sickening events that followed reveals the final minutes of the Jonestown cult. A barrel of Kool-Aid, a soft drink, laced with cyanide and sedatives was given to everybody congregated and, after a few protests from those with young children who said that their offspring should be allowed to live were dismissed by Jones either persuading them to the contrary or forcing them, the horror began. Babies and child
ren were the first victims of Jones’ evil; the poison administered by syringes squirting it into their mouths. The adults followed suit.

  A total of 913 bodies were recovered from Jonestown, including Jones himself who was found with a single gunshot wound to his right temple which, authorities believe was self-inflicted. Sadly, the bodies of 412 cult members were never claimed by relatives and were buried in a mass grave in Oakland, California. Jones’ legacy leaves a number of questions; most notably that of whether the events of Jonestown constituted a cult suicide or a mass murder. Most share the view that, in the very least, the children were murdered at his whim while many others have concluded that the majority of the adults were manipulated by an evil and calculating man who had falsely gained their devotion. This leads to the question of how one man could exercise such control over so many people. Some theories state that Jones created and resolved ‘threats’ before telling his followers about how he had saved them, thus earning him a position of trust that he abused with devastating results; the like of which would tragically be seen again in other religious sects.

  Joseph di Mambro

  When firefighters were called to tackle a blaze at a privately owned property in Morin Heights, Quebec, on 4 October 1994 they could be forgiven for thinking that the distressing presence of two charred bodies would be the extent of their unwelcome discovery.

  ORDER OF THE SOLAR TEMPLE

  The building belonged to a Joseph di Mambro and officials assumed that the deceased were the sixty-nine-year-old and his friend, Luc Jouret. When closer inspection revealed that one of the dead bodies was that of a woman and that the male victim was neither di Mambro nor Jouret, it was the start of a string of such gruesome discoveries that would ultimately unmask the landlord and his friend as co-founders of a religious sect known as the Order of the Solar Temple which was accountable for the deaths of over fifty people both in Canada and thousands of miles away in Switzerland.

  Born in the inter-war years in southern France, Joseph di Mambro was a mysterious man who was attracted to esoteric religions from an early age. The first half of his life does not seem to be very well documented, although it is known that he trained as a jeweller and watchmaker. In January 1956 he joined the Ancient and Mystical Order of the Rosae Crucis (AMORC), a secret philosophical society, becoming the head of its lodge in Nimes, France by the end of the following decade. In 1970, he became a lecturer in the burgeoning New Age Movement, founding the Centre for the Preparation of the New Age three years later. He then established a commune for this organisation in his native France close to the Swiss border. It was during this time that he began to claim to be both a member of the Great White Brotherhood – a group that occultists believe to be superhumans who shape the development of the human race – and also the reincarnation of a number of notable religious figures including Moses and Osiris.

  COSMIC MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN

  In the early 1980s, di Mambro met Jouret, a Belgian homeopathic physician. The pair struck up an instant friendship, bonding over their shared obsession with the occult and, in 1984, the Order of the Solar Temple was founded; di Mambro was essentially the director of operations, dictating rituals from behind the scenes while the charismatic Jouret became its figurehead and, to all intents and purposes, its leader and recruiter. The cult has been described as a fusion of traditional occultism and a belief in the coming of a ‘New Age’. The manipulative di Mambro used his growing reputation to convince his followers to hand over their money and possessions to him so that he could take care of their collective interests. He believed that his daughter Emmanuelle, born in 1982, was a cosmic being who was destined to lead the world into the New Age and set about arranging cosmic marriages among his followers, dictating which couples had cosmic children to assist Emmanuelle in her perceived role of messiah. Rumour has it that Jouret convinced members that, in a previous life, he had been a member of the Knights Templar, a Christian military order during the middle ages, and that he also believed himself to be the third incarnation of Jesus Christ. He preached to them about his belief that death was an illusion and that after they left their mortal bodies, they would be transported to the star Sirius. Things went well for the organisation during the remainder of the 1980s with membership reaching its hundreds and considerable wealth being accrued as a result. In the early years of the next decade, however, its fortunes changed; di Mambro’s health began to fail him and people began to question his authority, some demanding their money back and leaving the sect. His family began to fall apart after Emmanuelle herself rebelled against his orders and his older child, Elie, denounced him to members of the sect. Then, in 1993, Jouret was arrested for buying illegal weapons. The reputation of the cult, along with that of di Mambro, plummeted. He concluded that the world was not ready for the New Age and that he and his followers should therefore ‘leave’ for a higher dimension, almost quite literally sparking the infernos that would help get them there.

  MEMBERS OF THE ORDER OF THE SOLAR TEMPLE

  After the initial discovery of the two bodies at the property in Quebec – both of which turned out to belong to members of the order – the building was searched in case there had been further casualties. Tragically, there were; the remains of three more people – a man, a woman and a child – were found in a cupboard. Further analysis revealed that the departed had not perished in the fire and had, in fact, been dead for a few days before the building was consumed by flames. The three corpses discovered in the cupboard belonged to Antonio Dutoit, his wife, Nikki and their three-month-old son, Christopher-Emmanuel. The parents had been killed by multiple stab wounds to their backs, chests and throats while the child had been stabbed in the chest six times with a wooden stake. The police were understandably baffled, apparently left with more questions than answers. The truth slowly began to surface when it was ascertained that the Dutoits had previously been members of the Order of the Solar Temple cult. Various theories exist as to why they were murdered; some simply state that it was felt that the couple may have known too much, whereas others relate to their infant son. One is that he was conceived against the cult’s wishes while another rumour is that di Mambro became convinced that the child was a reincarnation of the Anti Christ and ordered his shocking execution.

  On the same day as the grisly discovery in Canada, a similar fire was discovered in an outbuilding at a farm all the way across the Atlantic in Cheiry, Switzerland. The victim was retired farmer, Alberto Giacobino, who had a plastic bag over his head and appeared to have been shot. As police combed the property for clues as to what exactly had happened, they found incendiary devices that had started the fire as well as what appeared to be a meeting hall full of people’s abandoned possessions. Then, an astounding discovery was made. One of the walls in the hall was found to move and it concealed a lavishly decorated chamber full of mirrors. Inside this new room was a carefully arranged circle of twenty-two corpses, most of which were clad in ceremonial robes. Like the first body, the majority had plastic bags over their heads and had been shot. Some of the bodies had their hands clasped, presumably in prayer, and there were champagne bottles strewn around the room. There was a makeshift altar with a rose, a cross and a photograph of Luc Jouret on it. Further incendiary devices that had failed to go off were then discovered. Investigators believed that the macabre events had taken place the day before and were aided with the grim results heralded by yet another fire on 5 October, this time around 100 miles away in Granges-sur-Salvan, also in Switzerland. Three ski chalets had been rigged to burn in the same way as the hall in Cheiry had been. Inside two of them were some more horrifyingly similar discoveries; twenty-five badly charred corpses – including children – many of which had multiple bullet wounds to their heads had been arranged into a circle. International arrest warrants were issued for both di Mambro and Jouret, although it was eventually established that the ring leaders were among the dead. It later emerged that that the puppet master of the cult had gathered together his close
st confidantes for a last supper before the carnage began and, in another development, that several suicide notes stating the cult’s intention to ‘leave for a higher dimension’ as per di Mambro and Jouret’s teachings had been left behind by its members.

  Based on the post mortems of the victims in the weeks that followed, magistrates concluded that only 15 of the deaths in Switzerland were willing suicides while at least seven were presumed to be executions. The majority had taken tranquilizers before being shot. After the events in Switzerland and Canada had taken place, more dark secrets about the Order of the Solar Temple emerged. It had an extensive portfolio of property across the two countries as well as in France and had been involved in some large-scale money laundering operations. It had also been implicated in arms trafficking, stockpiling them to allegedly prepare for the end of the world. A year later, a further 16 members of the cult were found dead in France and a further five took their own lives in Quebec in 1997; di Mambro may have been dead, but his evil legacy had lived on.

  Shoko Asahara

  It seemed to be just another unremarkable morning on the Tokyo underground on 20 March 1995 – until the heart of the city was rocked by a sudden and virulent act of terrorism. Panic ensued as sarin – a fatal nerve gas – was deployed; twelve commuters never made it out of the subway alive and thousands more were taken seriously ill in the sickening attacks masterminded by cult leader Shoko Asahara.

  CHIZUO MATSUMOTO

  Born Chizuo Matsumoto in 1955, his childhood was one of adversity. Not only was he born into an impoverished family, but he was also diagnosed with infantile glaucoma at birth. As a result of this condition, he was left blind in his left eye and only partially sighted in his right, and this resulted in him becoming the victim of schoolyard bullying. His parents responded by having him enrolled in a government-funded school for blind children, where his fortunes changed. As the only pupil with any sight, he turned this to his advantage by becoming a bully himself and forcing the other children to do whatever he said, only doing favours for them in exchange for money. In these, his formative years, it was already becoming evident that he was a calculating and manipulative individual motivated by financial gain and control over others.