From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Thu Mar 27 1997 - 13:33:05 MST
weirdo, weirdo on the wall...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 08:11:09 -0700 (MST)
From: Ryan R. Snyder <rye@denver.net>
To: w00f@ism.net
Subject: w00f: California Suicide Group Ran Web Programming Service
California Suicide Group Ran Web Programming Service
****California Suicide Group Ran Web Programming Service 03/27/97 TOKYO,
JAPAN, 1997
MAR 27 (NB) -- By Martyn Williams. The deaths of at least 39 people in
Rancho Santa Fe, California, in what appears to be a mass suicide, has a
connection with the Internet. The group were apparently members of a
religious group, World Wide Higher Source, and that they financed
operations by running a Web site design and programming service, "Higher
Source Contract Services."
The company has designed a handful of Web sites including those of the
San Diego Polo Club, a
Christian music site called Keep The Faith, a company specializing in
British classic cars called British Masters, and a camera retailer,
Newsbytes has learned.
The group has its own domain, highersource.com, and usually runs a Web
server from the address
http://www.highersource.com , but this appears to be offline at present,
as are some of the client Web sites which are also run from the machine.
The computer in question was, however, still connected to the Internet
when Newsbytes checked at 8am EST.
Exhaustive Internet searches have revealed little else about the group,
and nothing related to religion. Apart from the group's own Web site,
for its Web design business, the only other related items are a large
number of messages on Usenet from someone appeared related to the group
and its business.
An idea of the secrecy of the group can be found in the information
submitted in the domain name database when it acquired the
highersource.com domain name. "We have no one here of that name and I
don't know where the gentlemen ever got that number," a
Ramada Inn employee answered when we attempted to contact "Ben Guiat,"
the listed contact person.
The e-mail listed as a contact, font@cris.com, appeared in 27 different
Usenet messages alongside the name "Stewart Craft." All the
messages found were concerned with Web programming. The most recent
messages were posted exactly one month ago, on February
27th. Newsbytes did discover a mirror of the down Higher Source Web site
is available at http://www.cris.com/~font , but reveals little
about the group except for its Web design service.
(19970327/Reported By Newsbytes News Network: http://www.newsbytes.com
/CULT970327/PHOTO)
"The Pulse of the Information Age" Newsbytes News Network
http://www.newsbytes.com 24-hour computer, telecom and online
news
Copyright ŠNewsbytes News Network. All rightsreserved. For more
Newsbytes see http://www.newsbytes.com.
--- Ryan R. Snyder rye@denver.net Internet Specialist
"To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the
alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die." -Oscar Wilde
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:19 MST