The authorship of these files on cults has his or her own motivations for providing them a

    [Fredric Rice, The Skeptic Tank:  The authorship of these files on
    cults has his or her own motivations for providing them and will
    contain his or her own bias.  What I find typical is that
    individuals and organizations which report on cults are usually
    themselves a competition cult yet like to think of themselves as
    "a religion, not a cult."  In actual fact, _ALL_ religions are
    cults by the primary, secondary, and terciary usage definition of
    the term.  Some of the information you find here is inaccurate and
    contains urban legend -- take what you find with a grain of salt.
    If you wish to acquire a copy of the Law Enforcement Guide on
    Occult Crime, contact myself at frice@stbbs.com or at The Skeptic
    Tank (818) 335-9601 and I'll forward the address and information
    you need.]

CULTS 'R US

        [Fredric Rice: This file contains only a few claims and
        commentary about a few "killer cults."  Christianity has
        been and continues to be the killer cult with the highest
        body count today.  For some reason the author didn't
        mention that undeniable fact nor does the authorship
        describe what the selection elements he or she used to
        determine whether a religion is a "cult" by his or her
        variation of usage.]

Killer cults tend to be led by charismatic megalomaniacs who
pit themselves and their churches against the rest of the world. 
There are usually apocalyptic visionaries drunk with lust and 
power that have physical and sexual control over their followers. 
In most cases their beliefs stem from twisted interpretations of 
established doctrines. These self-proclaimed divinities usually 
amassed a large arsenal of weapons before bringing forth their 
personal day of reckoning. 

Reverend Jim Jones & The People's Temple (900+) Jim Jones,
the son of a Klansman, considered
himself the reincarnation of both Jesus and Lenin. He was also 
endowd with a huge penis which he used in the name of Christ. He 
had visions of an impending nuclear holocaust in which only the 
towns of Ukiah, California and Belo Horizonte, Brazil would 
survive. He relocated his first People's Temple to Ukiah to await 
the Armageddon. Tired of waiting, he moved his church to San 
Francisco where he recieved numerous humanitarian awards and 
became the Chairman of the city's Housing Authority. There he 
practiced a ritual called "White Nights" in which he prepared his 
followers for an act of revolutionary suicide to protest against 
racism and fascism. In 1977, as things go weirder, he was forced 
to relocate his church to Guana, in South America. There Jimmy 
created Jonestown and lost his mind. His dream community seemed 
to have rapidly deteriorated into a nightmare. On November 18, 
1978, when Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown to investigate 
alledged human rights abuses, the good reverend had him and his
party killed. Then he ordered his followers to drink from a tub 
of Kool Aid laced with cyanide and tranquilizers. All 900+ did. 
As the ritual suicide progressed, Jim put a bullet through his 
brain. Some believe that Jimmy was linked to the CIA and that the 
Jonestown massacre was in fact a mind control experiment. If it 
was, it was a total success.


David Koresh & ATF (90) On February 28, 1993, when the Storm
Troopers of the ATF tried to enter the Branch Davidian compound 
in the outskirts of Waco, Texas, Dave and the gang answered with 
a rain of lead killing four ATF agents. This failed rock'n roller 
turned doomsday prophet and poster boy for the NRA resisted the 
ATF siege that followed for fifty-one days. He also promised to 
bring forth a fiery apocalypse for all those with him in the 
compound. On April 19, 1993, as the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation agents under the lead of Bob Ricks launched their 
assault, the compound broke out in flames killing eighty-six 
people inside. The government claimed that Koresh ignited the 
flames and had the compound booby-trapped so the place would go 
up in a fireball. Some, like the recently infamous Michigan 
Militia, believe the Feds and Attorney Genereal Janet Reno to be 
completely responsible for the deaths of the Koresh and his 
fellow charred Branch Davidians.

Order of the Solar Temple(69) As the millenium rapidly approaches,
this international apocalyptical cult has claimed 69 victims in
bizarre mass suicide rituals.  Strangely, most of the members of
the sect seem to be highly educated and  well-to-do individuals
who follow, seemingly a bit too eagerly, the temple's doomsday
teachings. The Order itself stems from the Knights of Templar,
a secretive medieval organization founded by French crusaders
in Jerusalem.   How it became a New Age Euro-Yuppie Suicide
machine, is a solar mystery.

The Temple came to prominence on October 5, 1994, when 53 people
committed suicide simultaneously in several chalets in Switzerland
and Canada. The two known leaders of the group, the Belgian New
Ageist Luc Jouret, and the guru Joseph di Mambro, died in the
1994 ritual.  The cult is seems to give great importance to the
sun and practices most of its rituals during the summer and
winter equinox. The 1994 deaths were meant to take the sect
members through fire to a new world on a planet called "Sirius." To
assist with the trip, several of the victims, including some
children, were shot in the head, asphyxiated with black plastic
bags and or poisoned.  Luc and Joseph wrote, in a letter delivered
after their deaths that they were "leaving this earth to find a
new dimension of truth and absolution, far from the hypocrisies
of this world."

The second mass suicide ritual ocurred about a week before
Christmas in 1995.  On December 23, on a remote plateau of
the French Alps police found 16 charred bodies arranged in a
star formation  with their feet pointed to the ashes of a fire.
Like the rituals of 1994, they all died by stabbing, asphyxiation,
shooting and/or poisoning. Like before, the bodies were burned as
part of a cleansing ritual.

A week before discovering the bodies, Swiss and French authorities
suspected the worse when 16 cult members dissappeared from their
homes. Some left behind handwritten notes expressing their
intentions of committing mass suicide.  One of the notes stated:

        "Death does not exist, it is pure illusion. May we, in
        our inner life, find each other forever."

Two of the dead were the wife and son of French ski champion, Jean
Vuarnet who, curiously, made a fortune manufacturing sunglasses.

Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo & Sara Aldrete (24)
Constanzo, a Cuban-American bisexual cult leader and male model, 
managed a drug smuggling ring in Matamoros, Mexico. He and Sara 
Aldrete were very successful in the drug trade because their 
habit of ritually sacrificing their competition to gain 
protections from the Gods of darkness. Their gig ran afoul when 
they decided what they needed was to kill a gringo. They abducted 
Mark Kilroy, a college student on spring break, and killed him. 
He was dismembered and they made a magic stew out of his heart, 
genitals and spine. Constanzo and his killed his male lover were 
killed by another cult member a Mexico City apartment before the 
police charged in. The college-student-gone-cult-priestess 
Aldrete is now in jail in Mexico.

Yahweh Ben Yahweh & The
Temple of Love (14+) This charismatic black leader of the
Church of Love and sixteen followers have been charged with the 
slayings of at least fourteen people. Yahweh Ben Yahweh (God, son 
of God) was born Hulon Mitchell. He built a multimillion-dollar 
business empire in the Miami area through murder, fire bombings 
and extortion. However, he also managed to join Miami's Chamber 
of Commerce and was even honored with the proclamation of "Yahweh 
Ben Yahweh Day" by city's mayor. The secretive Church of Love 
preached that the American blacks were true Jews living in the 
land of the "white devil". It's members dressed in white robes, 
took the last name Israel and followed a kosher diet. The cult is 
accused of a reign of terror that includes the beheading of an ex 
member, the fire bombing of a Delray Beach neighborhood and many 
other acts of violence. It seemed that to become part of the 
"Brotherhood", a secret group within the sect, one had to smoke a 
"white devil". Many of the shady details of the sect's activities 
come from Robert Rozier, a 
former football player, who was arrested in 1986 in connection to 
four of the killings.

Shoko Asahara & Aum Supreme Truth (18+) This apocalyptic
Sect and its charismatic leader are suspected of releasing Sarin, 
a type of nerve gas developed by the Nazis, in several Tokyo 
subway stations. The morning subway gas attack on March, 1995,
killed 11 people and sickened more than 5,500 others.  The
religious cult is also suspected of a similar gas attack that
killed seven people in June, 1994, in the city of Matsumoto.
Furthermore they are suspected of a series of slayings and
kidnappings of anti-cult activist.

Charles Manson & The Family (9+)
Charlie is Reigning King of America's Homicidal Maniacs. The son 
of a teenage, bisexual, alcoholic prostitute, he was once traded 
for a pitcher of beer. The product of institutional life, he 
spent more than half of his days incarcerated before the age of 
thirty-five. In 1967 this ex-con and aspiring musician drifted to 
San Francisco just in time to catch the Summmer of Love. There he 
became the "God of Fuck". Charlie's charisma made him the Messiah 
of every lost flower child. His odd interpretation of the 
Beatles' song "Helter Skelter" warned of a coming race war in 
which "blackie" would win. Then he and his minions, who had been 
breeding at a furious rate in their Death Valley ranch, would 
take over and rule the world. Ultimately, the reign of terror 
perpetrated by this midget genius had nothing to do with his 
visions of Armageddon. Instead, it was simply an act of revenge 
against the music industry who ignored him. Between July and 
August of 1969, "The Family" committed the now infamous Tate and 
LaBianca murders. Sadly for Sharon and her friends the intended 
victims had recently moved out of the house she rented with her 
husband Roman Polanski. Charlie was never proven to have killed 
anyone. It is believed that "The Family" was probably responsible 
for dozens of deaths before and after the arrest and 
incarceration of their leader. If only Charlie had been a better 
musician, Sharon Tate and the others would probably still be 
alive.

Robin Gecht (8+) In the early eighties Robin
a former employee of John Wayne 
Gacy, and three followers had a Satanic cult dedicated to 
spreading death and mayhem through the streets of Chicago. Gecht 
and his gang drove around in a van looking for prostitutes to 
sacrifice. They would remove their breasts and eat them as Robin 
read passages of the bible. Gecht and his friends were finally 
arrested in 1982 for the stabbing of a teenaged prostitute and 
like every good Satanist they all started squealing on each 
other.

Jeffrey Lundgren (5) As leader of a branch of the
Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, 
Lundgren wielded total control over his six-family flock. He beat 
misbehaving children with poles, trained his followers for war 
and masturbated while naked female cult members danced around 
him. A man of strange appetites, Jeb7 enjoyed having excrement 
rubbed all over his body by his loving wife. In 1984 he settled 
with his cult in a forty acre farm in rural Ohio. When one of his 
followers questioned his judgement he executed him and his 
family. The Avery family was thrown in a pit under the barn of 
the cult's ranch and were all shot in the head. Lungren and his 
family fled but were captured in National City, California, with 
an arsenal in their motel room. His nineteen-year-old son was 
convicted of four murders, his wife received five consecutive 
life terms and Jeb7 got death.

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