Members of the Solar Temple cult stabbed a 3-month-old boy in the heart before killing themselves in last month's mass murder-suicide because they considered the baby the Antichrist, police said Friday.
The infant, Christopher Dutoit, was one of five people found dead in an apartment in Morin Heights, about 48 miles north of Montreal. His parents were also murdered, and the other two died in an intentionally set fire.Their deaths are linked to 48 others, all members of the Solar Temple, who were murdered or committed suicide in burned-down chalets in two towns in Switzerland at the same time in early October. Some of the dead had taken or been given drugs, while others had gunshot wounds in their heads.
Quebec provincial police told a news conference that Christopher Dutoit was proclaimed to be the Antichrist by Joseph Di Mambro.
Di Mambro, the spiritual leader of the Solar Temple cult, apparently identified the child as the Antichrist in part because Christopher's mother, Nicky Dutoit, had chosen to stay with her husband and have a child (Christopher) instead of staying on to tutor Di Mambro's child, Emmanuelle.
"The child was considered contaminated (after he was born)," Police Inspector Richard St-Denis said. "He was identified as an Antichrist, and the only way to kill the Antichrist is with a knife through the heart."
Two other people were in the Morin Heights apartment at the time of the Dutoits' murder. One of them, Dominique Bellaton, was the mother of Di Mambro's child Emmanuelle. But she was believed by Solar Temple members to have been impregnated by him by immaculate conception, St-Denis said.
Christopher's parents - both members of Solar Temple - had been stabbed to death.
Quebec police also gave other details of the grisly deaths, and said an investigation into illegal arms purchases by Solar Temple members in 1993 prevented the mass murder-suicide from taking place in Quebec at that time.
"In 1993 they were trying to make a mass suicide . . . but because of our presence (at the planned location) they could not use the place as they had hoped to," said Michel Brunet, spokesman for the Quebec police.
The police said between 40 and 80 Solar Temple members quit the cult after the investigation, when they realized what the leaders planned to do.