- EDITORIAL BRIEF: These horrific incidents serve as a reminder of the dangers of cults and the devastating consequences of blind faith in charismatic leaders. It is important to raise awareness about the warning signs of cults and to promote critical thinking and skepticism to prevent future tragedies.
Following the tragic discovery of the bodies of over 60 suspected cult members who starved themselves to death in Kenya, it is important to look back at other notorious killer sects throughout history.
- One of the most infamous cases of mass murder-suicide occurred in Guyana in 1978. Jim Jones, the leader of the People’s Temple sect, convinced his followers to commit “revolutionary suicide” by drinking poison or being shot while trying to flee. 914 adults and children died in the Guyana jungle, with Jones himself found dead with a bullet to his head.
- In 2000, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God burned to death over 700 members in southwestern Uganda’s Kanungu district. The cult believed that the world would come to an end at the turn of the millennium and locked their members inside a church before setting it on fire.
- The Waco siege in 1993 resulted in the deaths of 76 members of the Branch Davidian cult, including 20 children, when federal agents stormed their wooden fortress after a 51-day standoff. The cult’s leader, David Koresh, died with many of his followers. The group had been accused of stockpiling weapons, and US authorities had obtained a search warrant for the compound.
- In 1994, 48 members of the doomsday Solar Temple sect, including its leaders, were found dead in the Swiss villages of Cheiry and Granges-sur-Salvan. Over 70 members of the cult died in total, including 10 people living in the Canadian province of Quebec and 16 people whose charred bodies were found in the Vercors mountains of southeast France. Investigators suggested that as many as two thirds of the dead could have been murdered, despite notes left by some members indicating a mass suicide.
- The Heaven’s Gate cult in San Diego, California, committed mass suicide in 1997 by poisoning themselves to coincide with the arrival of the Hale-Bopp comet, believing that it was a signal for their exit from Earth. The dead included the cult’s co-founder, Marshall Applewhite. The cult believed that members could transform themselves into immortal extraterrestrials by rejecting their human nature.
- In Japan in 1995, the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo released toxic sarin gas into Tokyo’s subway network, killing 13 people and sickening thousands of others. The cult’s headquarters near Mount Fuji was found to have a plant capable of producing enough sarin to kill millions. Thirteen Aum members, including the cult’s leader, Shoko Asahara, were executed for the crime.
