
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, October 7, 1994                   TAG: 9410070025
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHEIRY, SWITZERLAND NOTE: ABOVE                                 LENGTH: Short

GLOBAL MANHUNT BEGINS

Investigators struggled Thursday 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.

Authorities said they did not know if Jouret, still missing, was dead or alive. Initial investigations suggested some of the cult members committed suicide and others were murdered.

Police detained several past and present cult members for questioning Thursday and launched an international search for Jouret.

Investigating Judge Andre Piller said autopsies showed at least some of the 23 victims found Wednesday in a burning farmhouse had been injected with ``a powerful, violent'' drug that could have killed them.

That did not ``rule one way or the other for suicide or for murder,'' he said. ``They could have chosen to die that way.''

Many bodies in the farmhouse also had bullet wounds, but Piller said no weapons were found, ``which worries me. There had to be another person to put several bullets in the heads of these victims.''

Canadian police discovered at least two more bodies Thursday in a house north of Montreal. Two bodies had been found earlier at the house, which was destroyed Tuesday by a fire set by remote control in the same manner as fires that razed the Cheiry farmhouse and three Swiss chalets where others died.

Piller said documents showed several of the members were entangled in a dispute with the cult's leaders over money.

by CNB