A letter apparently mailed before 48 cult members died in a mass murder-suicide said the group was "leaving this earth" to escape the "hypocrisies and oppression of this world," an expert on cults said Thursday.
Jean-Francois Mayer, who has studied the apocalyptic cult, said he received three documents in the mail Wednesday morning signed by a fictitious "Mr. Depart.""What I read confirmed the theory of horrible mass suicide," Mayer told Swiss radio. He said he believed the documents were mailed by members of the cult. The postmark was Geneva, but the date of mailing was smudged.
Mayer said it appeared the cult, called the Order of the Solar Temple in Canada and the Order of the Solar Tradition in Switzerland, had suffered from a worsening persecution complex.
"We are leaving this earth to find in all lucidity and freedom a new dimension of truth and absolution, far from the hypocrisies and oppression of this world, in order to achieve the seeds of our future generation," one of the documents said.
Police said they found goodbye letters Thursday from some of the cult members but did not release details.
Firefighters discovered a safe among the charred bricks and blocks of wood of a burned-out chalet in this Alpine village, where 25 of the victims, including several children, were found Wednesday. They refused to disclose its contents. Despite earlier fears the death toll would rise, police said no more bodies were found.
Valais canton police chief Bernard Geiger said police were studying documents and cassette tapes found in six vacation apartments that cult members had rented in a nearby village.
Geiger said he did not believe all the cult members wanted to die.
"I see this more as a collective murder. I formally exclude collective suicide decided by all - that idea's pure cinema," he told a news conference.
"You can't expect children to want to kill themselves."
At least one of the the chalets in Granges-Sur-Salvan where the bodies were found was rented by cult leader Luc Jouret.
A charred bank check belonging to Jouret in one of the drawers removed from the chalet was all that remained of his presence. It was unclear whether Jouret was among the dead.
Freiburg police spokesman Beat Karlen wouldn't identify the two people sought by police, but he described them as witnesses.
"It's not as if we are looking for murderers or anything like that," he told The Associated Press.
The bodies were found early Wednesday after fires destroyed three chalets and a farmhouse in two Swiss cantons, or states. Police also suspected a link to two deaths in a fire at a duplex in Canada owned by Jouret this week.
Most of the dead were Swiss, French or Canadian. They included the mayor of Richelieu, Quebec, and his wife, Canadian police said.
Authorities said Thursday that Canada had asked them last year to investigate Jouret. Police found he was obeying Swiss law and took no further action, said Swiss Justice Ministry spokeswoman Corinne Goetschel.
Canada made no further requests, so Switzerland dropped the matter, she said.
"Now, obviously, the investigation has been resurrected. We are cooperating with each other and passing on information from our inquiries," Goetschel said.
Jouret, a Belgian doctor who used to specialize in homeopathy, was known among cult specialists for his predictions of the end of the world. He is believed to have fled to Switzerland last year after being charged with weapons possession and conspiracy in Canada.
Twenty-five bodies were found in three chalets in a ski area at Granges-sur-Salvan in Valais, 45 miles southeast of Geneva.
Another 23 bodies were found in a burned-out farmhouse in Cheiry, 45 miles northeast of Geneva.