Mass Suicide and Its Prevalence

Mass Suicide is not a very prevalent topic today. Mass Suicide is not a wide spread problem, it is more so based upon the individual. The following is a timeline, starting in 1978, which shows the mass suicides that have occurred since then.

• March 27, 1997- 39 Heaven's Gate came to public attention when they committed mass suicide.
• March 22, 1997- in St. Casmir, Quebec, five members of the Order of the Solar Temple die in a fiery mass suicide. Cult devotees believe suicide transports them to a new life on a planet called Sirius. Over the past three years, murder-suicides by Temple followers have resulted in 74 deaths in Europe and Canada.
• Dec. 23, 1995- 16 members of the Order of the Solar Temple were found dead in a burned house outside Grenoble, in the French Alps. Most of the bodies were arranged in a star shape on the floor.
• Oct. 5, 1994- Swiss authorities found the bodies of 48 people linked to the cult in a farmhouse and three chalets, all consumed by fire. Five more bodies were found the same year in Morin Heights, north of Montreal.
• April 19, 1993- Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and 80 followers -- including 18 children -- died by fire or gunfire, six hours after the FBI started filling their cult compound near Waco, Texas, with tear gas. The government called the deaths a mass suicide in fires set by cult members after a 51-day armed standoff.
• Dec. 13, 1990- in Tijuana, Mexico, 12 people die in a religious ritual, apparently after drinking a poisoned sacrament. It was never clearly established if this was a suicide and authorities speculated the deaths might have been accidental. They said some kind of industrial alcohol, perhaps rubbing alcohol, was poured into a fruit punch the participants shared during the religious ceremony.
• Nov. 18, 1978- in Jonestown, Guyana, more than 900 followers of the Rev. Jim Jones died after he ordered them to drink cyanide-laced grape punch. Jones, who was found dead with a bullet wound in the head, led the Peoples Temple in San Francisco and moved it to Guyana. In the United States, the Peoples Temple ran a free clinic, a drug rehabilitation program and performed other charitable functions. Jones also had been chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority in 1976.