Shoko Asahara And The Japanese Doomsday-Cult Of Aum Shinrikyo
Wojtek Laski/Getty ImagesShoko Asahara during a visit to Moscow, Russia, on Feb. 17, 1994.
In 1987, Shoko Asahara (born Chizuo Matsumoto) founded the group Aum Shinrikyo. The group began as a yoga school that fused Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism and encouraged spiritual mindfulness — at first. According to The Independent, the group amassed thousands of acolytes in Japan and Russia.
Unfortunately, the group also eventually preached Doomsday prophecies and occultism. Asahara not only claimed that he was the reincarnation of Buddha, but that nuclear war between Japan and the U.S. was nigh — and only faithful followers of his would survive.
According to The South China Morning Post, Asahara was born on March 2, 1955. He was one of nine children born to a poor straw hat maker on the island of Kyushu. Partially blind, he went to a state boarding school for blind children when he was six and quickly grew to be a bully.
United States Public Health Service / Wikimedia CommonsEmergency personnel respond to the Tokyo subway attack on March 20, 1995.
“For him, violence was like a hobby,” a former classmate said. “Once he got angry, there was no way to stop it.
Nevertheless, his charisma and manipulative empathy would later allow him to attract thousands of devotees. He promised followers of Aum Shinrikyo that they could acquire “the power of God with the right kind of training.”
He began calling himself Asahara in the 1980s, after leaving school at 19 and studying acupuncture.
Failing to get into both medical school and law school, Asahara illegally sold medicine out of his acupuncture practice — which led to his first arrest. He became reclusive, studying religious texts and traveling to India after which he reemerged as a yoga teacher. He claimed he had reached enlightenment in the Himalayas and that he could even levitate for hours.
“Asahara was talented at brainwashing… [he] lured young people, who felt a sense of emptiness in Japanese society.” — Kimiaki Nishida, social psychology professor at Rissho University in Tokyo.
He soon amassed a group that operated out of a hub at the base of Mount Fuji where members synthesized chemical weapons.
His growing cult ran for a parliamentary election in 1990 but failed to get enough votes. Increasingly angry and impatient, Asahara led a sarin gas attack in Matsumoto city in June 1994, which injured over 500 people and killed eight.
The group evaded detection, which led to an even more fatal incident on March 20, 1995, when five members of Aum Shinrikyo descended into the Tokyo underground at different points during rush hour. They exposed passengers there to the deadly World War II-era sarin gas.
The suspects wore surgical masks and carried the liquid chemical in packets hidden inside newspapers in plastic bags. These amounted to nearly a liter each, while a drop of sarin no bigger than a pin is already fatal through direct contact.
After piercing the packets with their sharpened umbrellas, the five men and their accompanying getaway drivers fled the trains and escaped. Panic set in almost immediately: those who weren’t foaming at the mouth or coughing up blood were desperately trying to escape.
In the end, 688 people were rushed to hospitals while 5,510 more hurried there on their own. Emergency response was harshly criticized, as authorities failed to rapidly halt train service to contain the issue and officials failed to arrest those responsible for the similar attack a year earlier.
Asahara’s lengthy trial landed him on death row in 2006. He was hanged in July 2018. Twelve Aum members were sentenced to death while Aum Shinrikyo rebranded itself as Aleph. The group officially disowned its previous leader and even donated money to those injured during the attacks.
FLDS Church Leader Warren Jeffs And His Collection Of Child Wives
YouTubeWarren Jeffs is one of the most infamous individuals in Mormon history. Here is Jeffs with one of his child brides.
The crimes of the former leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), Warren Jeffs, were so egregious that he made the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List in 2006.
Jeffs fathered 60 children in total and had between 70 and 80 wives. Most unnerving, however, were the methods by which Jeffs secured his power over his religious career. When he was finally arrested, Jeffs was sentenced to life for the sexual assault of children in 2011. Two of his own children claimed that he had molested them when they were younger.
Jeffs was born on Dec. 3, 1955, in Sacramento, California and grew up in the FLDS community. While the sect has been staunchly disavowed by the Mormon church, both groups do share a belief in polygamy.
The Jeffs were staunch polygamists for generations. Jeffs’ father Rylon had at least 50 wives with whom he had as many as 80 children. Warren Jeffs was born premature and was thus seen as a miracle, but his deeds as an adult firmly proved otherwise.
After working as the strict principal of the FLDS’ private Alta Academy school for more than 20 years, Jeffs positioned himself as his father’s successor in the church. When his father died in 2002, Jeffs took over as leader, property owner, and prophet.
He even married some of his father’s widowed wives before establishing the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) Ranch in west Texas. There he controlled what acolytes wore, who they could marry, and prohibited television and internet access.
In 2004, Jeffs was hit with several lawsuits from followers he had excommunicated. Most notably, his nephew Brent sued him for sexually assaulting him as a child. Arizona officials also indicted Jeffs the following year on charges of sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to do so.
“If the world knew what I was doing, they would hang me from the highest tree.” — Journal entry by Warren Jeffs.
In 2006, he was further charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice for arranging the marriage of a 19-year-old man with his 14-year-old cousin. But by this point, Jeffs had seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth, earning him a spot on the FBI’s Wanted list.
According to Biography, Jeffs was finally captured in Nevada that August with over $50,000 in cash, numerous wigs, sunglasses, and cell phones in his car. Though his rape accessory conviction was overturned, he accrued a litany of additional charges after authorities raided the YFZ Ranch the following year.
YouTube14-year-old Elissa Wall and her 19-year-old cousin, who she was forced to marry in 2001.
Jeffs 2011 trial focused on two “celestial marriages”; one with a 12-year-old girl and another with a 15-year-old girl — with whom he fathered a child. Fortunately, Jeffs’ habit of recording his actions and having his wives write down his activities only helped to criminalize him further.
His defense was extremely weak and largely consisted of Mormon scripture that had no merit against actual acts of rape. But his fate was arguably sealed when audio of his assault of a 12-year-old was played in court. Jurors also discovered that around one-third of his 70 illegal marriages were with children.
According to CBS News, Jeffs has since suffered a mental breakdown and tried to commit suicide in prison. He had to be force-fed in 2009 and was put into a medically induced coma in 2011 after fasting behind bars.
