UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, October 7, 1994
5B
Cult deaths in Switzerland still perplex investigators
The Associated Press
CHEIRY, Switzerland — One cult member wrote her family that she had come to Switzerland to die, and another said the cult was "leaving this earth" to escape "the hypocrisies and oppression of this world."
Investigators struggled yesterday to explain the mass deaths of 48 followers of the mysterious Order of the Solar Tradition, amid revelations that some victims had been injected with a powerful drug and the discovery of more bodies at a house in Canada owned by cult leader Luc Jouret.
There was still no sign of Jouret, and authorities said they did not know if he was dead or alive.
Initial investigations suggested that some of the cult members committed suicide, while others were murdered.
Police detained several past and present members of the cult for questioning yesterday and launched an international search for Jouret.
Investigating judge Andre Piller said autopsies showed that at least some of the 23 victims found Wednesday in a burning hillside farmhouse in Cheiry had been injected with "a powerful, violent" drug that could have killed them.
The discovery did not "rule one way or the other for suicide or for murder," he said. "They could have chosen to die that wav."
But, Piller said, he was concerned that although many of the bodies discovered in the farmhouse also had bullet wounds, no weapons were found near the bodies.
"We haven't found as yet a point blank weapon, which worries me," Piller said. "There had to be another person to put several bullets in the heads of these victims."
Some of the bodies found in the farmhouse had their hands bound and plastic bags tied around their heads.
Police said earlier that the 25 other bodies found in three ski chalets in Valais, about 45 miles from the farmhouse, showed no signs of violence and appeared to "have been put to sleep."
Meanwhile, Canadian police yesterday discovered at least three more bodies, including that of a child, in a house owned by Jouret north of Montreal. Two bodies had been found earlier at the house, which was destroyed in an arson fire Tuesday. The fire was set by remote control in the same manner as the fires that razed the Cheiria farmhouse and Valais chalets.
Piller said documents showed that several of the cult members were entangled in a dispute with the cult's leaders about money.
Georgia county gets gun labels
The label says that a gun in the house increases the likelihood that the gun owner or a relative will be killed.
The ordinance, unanimously approved Wednesday by the Fulton County Commission, is the first in the nation, said Paul Blackman of the National Rifle Association in Washington.
"We're not telling citizens whether or not they can buy a gun but bringing up the seriousness of guns," said Commissioner John O'Callaghan, who sponsored the measure.
A label about the dangers of guns should also note the benefits, said Erich Pratt, director of government affairs for Gun Owners of America in Springfield, Va.
He said the ordinance was just another move toward outlawing firearms.
Evidence in Simpson's vehicle admissible
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Bits of hair, carpet fibers and splatters of blood in O.J. Simpson's Ford Bronco were properly seized and may be presented to a jury, a judge ruled yesterday.
Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito's ruling was the latest in a series of blows to defense lawyers trying to exclude evidence against Simpson in the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend.
"The search warrant that was sought, while not an example of clarity in drafting, certainly conveyed to the magistrate the idea that this evidence was both relevant and necessary." To said.
In another decision, ito refused to reopen a hearing into a key investigator the defense claims is a racist.
Rejecting contentions that new evidence had surfaced about detective Mark Führman, it said cases the defense claimed were unavailable could be found on a public legal database within 10 minutes.
The judge also chastised prosecutors for failing to produce information gained from a search of Simpson's Bentley automobile. He ordered Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark to report to him on the matter by today.
Ito, who earlier ruled that the Bronco was lawfully seized from outside Simpson's mansion the day after the June 12 slayings, said later searches and seizures of items and car parts were also legal.
possession of a police agency, they may conduct reasonable tests over a reasonable period of time," to said.
"Once an automobile is in the lawful
He also rejected arguments that detectives, and not police lab assistants, should have searched the Bronco.
"What the police have done was entirely reasonable and was compelled by what they already knew," Clark told Ito.
Defense lawyer Gerald Uelman insisted that police failure to obtain a search warrant for items inside the Bronco, including a light bulb, made the evidence inadmissible.
But detective Tom Lange suggested that the light bulb, found under a passenger seat of the Bronco, was taken because it could be important evidence.
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