Many have been deceived
Leader of the 1960s religious cult The
Family, Charles Manson is a convicted serial killer who convinced his
followers that he was Jesus Christ.
Manson directed members of The Family to go to the residence of Sharon
Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski, on Aug. 9, 1969.
Tate was entertaining friends at the time, and the party ended brutally as
a two-day killing spree claimed the lives of seven people. Here, members of
the Manson "family" in Los Angeles in 1970.
(AP Photo)
Heaven's Gate was a secretive,
new-age, UFO cult lead by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles.
Members believed that Hale-Bopp, a very bright comet, was a sign that they
were supposed to shed their bodies and join a spacecraft traveling behind
the comet to take them to a higher plane of existence.
In March 1997, 39 members of the cult committed suicide in shifts, with
some helping others to drink the lethal cocktail they had created. Here,
lays some of the bodies after the mass suicide.(AP Photo)
The largest mass suicide (39) ever on American soil.
The Branch Davidians was a religious cult
originating from a splinter group from the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Members of the cult believed that they were living in an apocalyptic time,
and that the days of final judgment were coming to pass.
The Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh, is best known for the 1993
siege of its Mount Carmel Center near Waco, Texas, which resulted in the
deaths of 82 of the cult's members.
(AP Photo)
A breakaway group from the Roman Catholic
Church in the 1980s, this cult had a doctrine that was focused on rigid
adherence to the Ten Commandments - so much so that the highly secretive
cult reportedly discouraged talking.
The group strongly emphasized the apocalypse, and after its prediction
that the world would end at the start of 2000 the group's leaders
orchestrated a mass suicide, followed by a systematic murder of about 400
more members who were burnt alive.
Here, a woman holds her coat to her nose as she walks past a house where
police found a mass grave in the garden in Rushojwa, Uganda, on March 30,
2000.(Jean-Marc Bouju/AP Photo)
schaefer
Paul Schaffer was the leader of the cult
Colonia Dignidad, a secretive German enclave he founded in Chile in the
1960s. Schaffer was accused of holding ultimate power over the group, and
residents were reportedly not allowed to leave the colony.
They were forced to take drugs, and severely beaten and tortured because
Schaffer allegedly found the practice enriching.
While sex was banned for followers, he was indicted in absentia on charges
of sexually abusing 26 children in Colonia Dignidad.
The colony also served as a concentration camp and torture center for
political prisoners during the rule of Augusto Pinochet.
(Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, right, speaks with
his disciples in Rajneeshpuram, Ore.
Beliefs of the members of his cult included very libertarian views on sex,
as well as condemnation toward family, nationhood, and religious
institutions in societies all over the world.
Hundreds of patrons of 10 restaurants in The Dalles, Ore., became ill in
September 1984 after being poisoned by members of the fringe religious cult
who sprayed lab-cultured salmonella bacteria onto salad bars over a two-week
period in an attempt to take over local governments they felt were harmful
to their cause.
(Jack Smith/AP Photo)
The coffins for the 16 people believed to
be members of the doomsday cult The Order of the Solar Temple are seen in
the Grenoble morgue in France on Dec. 23, 1995.
French authorities found 16 charred bodies of the Swiss-based cult,
arranged in star formation around a campfire near an Alpine village
southwest of Grenoble, and including three children.
Fifty-three members of the cult were found dead in Switzerland and Quebec
in October 1994.
(Philippe Desmazes/AP Photo)
The cult began attracting attention when
reports of faked miracle healings, sever punishment of members, sodomy, and
claims of being the next Messiah began to be investigated by law
enforcement.
Jones moved the cult to Guyana to escape the public eye. After a number of
members expressed a desire to leave, Jones ordered his congregation to
commit mass suicide in the form of a cyanide-laced beverage.
More than 900 people died, including almost 300 children.(AP Photo)
Shoko Asahara, center, was the founder of the
Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo, which gained notoriety in 1995 when
some of its members carried out a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway.
In the attack 12 people were killed, 54 were seriously harmed, and 980
were affected.
Here, Asahara sits in a police van following an interrogation in Tokyo, in
this Sept. 25, 1995 file photo.
(Kyodo News/AP Photo)
Jim Jones founded the religious cult
Peoples Temple in 1954, with its highest membership being estimated at 3,000
members.
The Siberian messiah who calls himself Vissarion, meaning "He who gives
new life," is head of an isolated religious commune deep in the birch
forests of Russia. Members of the Church of the Last Testament follow the
laws of the self-proclaimed reincarnation of Jesus Christ, maintaining a
largely vegan diet and skipping modern medicine to maintain harmony with
nature. Five times a day, believers turn in prayer toward the mountaintop
where Vissarion lives. The group's calendar even dates from the day of their
messiah's birth.
Wayne Bent/Michael Travesser: This leader of an apocalyptic sect in New
Mexico recently was indicted for sex crimes involving two of his female
followers. Wayne Bent, who wears a beard and is sometimes shown dressed in
flowing robes, leads the Lord of Our Righteousness Church, founded in 1987.
The self-described Messiah admits that sex with his followers is part of his
belief system, according to a post on his Web site, reports ABC News. But he
denies all allegations of molestation in the pending case.
Yisrayl Hawkins: The day self-proclaimed prophet Yisrayl "Buffalo Bill"
Hawkins predicted there would be a worldwide nuclear holocaust has come and
gone -- without event -- in June 2008. Members of Hawkins' House of Yahweh
sect prepared for doomsday by stockpiling food and water on the group's
44-acre ranch in Abilene, Texas. But the 73-year-old former policeman now
must deal with more pressing matters than nuclear war: He faces charges of
officiating polygamous weddings for his followers, charges to which he has
pled not guilty.
Claude Vorilhon, known to his followers as Rael, is a former racecar
magazine journalist turned mouthpiece for extraterrestrial beings. He claims
that in 1973 he was contacted by a green-skinned being that came out of a
flying saucer parked on a French volcano. Rael said it revealed to him that
humans were genetically engineered by a scientifically advanced people
called the Elohim. Since then, Rael has led a movement, claiming nearly
40,000 members, devoted to preparing for the return of the Elohim to Earth.
He made news in 2004 with claims that his company, Clonaid, had successfuly
cloned a human baby.
Non Killer Cults
Jose de Jesus: Is Jesus alive and living well in a Houston suburb? Followers
of Jose de Jesus say he is. The Puerto Rico-born "Jesus of Suburbia" claims
to be the Second Coming of Christ and the Antichrist all in one because, in
his theology, he says the Antichrist is not an evil being. De Jesus claims
followers in more than 30 countries around the world, and his most ardent
adherents show their devotion by inking themselves with a "666" tattoo.
