Founded in 1955 by Jim Jones, Peoples Temple, which counted thousands of members, was headquartered in San Francisco before the group took off for Guyana, to form a “socialist paradise.” On Nov. 18, 1978, 918 people died at Jonestown, including 270 children, and Congressman Leo Ryan. Until the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it was the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster.
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Charles Manson, an unemployed ex-convict, founded what became known as the Manson Family in California in the late 1960s. Believing the Beatles’ lyrics to the song Helter Skelter to be code about a coming apocalyptic race war, Manson set about instigating this war through a series of grisly murders, including the killing of Roman Polanski’s eight-months pregnant girlfriend, Sharon Tate, Aug. 9, 1969. Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Manson, used Helter Skelter as the title of a book he wrote about the case.
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The Branch Davidians was an apocalyptic Protestant group who believed that the Second Coming was imminent. On Feb. 28, 1993, authorities surrounded their property near Waco, Texas, in a 50-day long siege that eventually ended with the deaths of the leader, David Koresh, and 82 others cult members, as well as 4 federal agents. According to the Waco Tribune Herald, Koresh had declared that any women or girls in the group were his to have, and had fathered at least a dozen children, some by teenage girls.
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Founded and led by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, Heaven’s Gate was a group that combined Christian doctrine and thoughts about the apocalypse with elements of science fiction. The group rented a mansion in a gated community near San Diego and gave up their early possession. Some even underwent castration, including Applewhite, before committing collective suicide on March 26, 1997. All told, 39 people died after eating phenobarbital mixed with applesauce or pudding, and putting plastic bags over their heads. Authorities found the victims wearing identical black shirts and sweatpants, Nike sneakers and armbands spelling out Heaven’s Gate Away Team.
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Founded by Shoko Asahara in Japan in 1984, the group, which name in English is often translated as “Supreme Truth,” came to international attention on March 20, 1995, when its members carried out Sarin gas attacks on the subway in Tokyo, killing 12 people and injuring many others. Asahara’s group, which believed in a mixture of Buddhism and Christianity, laced with apocalyptic fervor, had already carried out a number of other killings and at least one other chemical attack. When authorities raided the group’s headquarters at the foot of Mount Fuji, they found helicopters, stockpiles of weapons, and strains of anthrax and Ebola.
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A secret society started in Switzerland in 1984, the group believed in the Second Coming of Christ, and had an intricate hierarchy that included Elders, Brothers and Knights. Fifty-three members of the cult were found in early October, 1994, in Canada and Switzerland in what appeared to be a collective murder-suicide. Many of the dead were dressed in ceremonial robes. Some had plastic bags tied over their heads and had been shot in the head.
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Formerly known as Colonia Dignidad, Villa Baviera was a colony in an isolated part of Chile. Surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers, the colony was home to German and Chilean residents. After Pinochet came to power in a military coup, the colony was used as a place to torture political prisoners. Defectors described the colony as a cult led by Paul Schäfer, a former Luftwaffe paramedic. Women and men were segregated and residents were forced to wear Bavarian peasant outfits and sing German folk songs. On May 20, 1997, Schäfer fled Chile. Authorities charged that he had molested 26 children at the colony. He was arrested in March 2005, and died in prison, while serving a 20-year sentence.
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