Today in History: Leader of the Ant Hill Kids cult kills a cult follower
The 1993 trial came to an abrupt end when Thériault pleaded guilty, whereafter he was sentenced to life in prison where he died.
Leader of the Ant Hill Kids cult, Roch Thériault fatally injured cult-follower Solange Boislard in Ontario, Canada on this day in 1988.
Thériault, the leader of the most bizarre and violent cult in Canadian history, often physically abused his followers. Obsessed with anatomy and medicine, Thériault performed crude intestinal surgery on Boislard by slicing her abdomen open and ripping out a piece of intestine with his bare hands.
He then ordered another follower to stitch up the wound with a needle and thread. When she died the next day in agonising pain, he sawed off the top of her head, and then sexually assaulted her. Before burying the woman, he removed a rib, which he wore around his neck.
Thériault was arrested and charged with murder the following year after another cult member, whose arm he had hacked off with a meat cleaver, told hospital authorities what had happened.
At his trial in 1993, even more horrific tales came to light. The cult leader had burned women with a welding torch, put vice-grips on their nipples, and cut their fingers off with a wire cutter. The alcoholic and delusional Thériault apparently thought he was driving the devil out of them.
Thériault also demanded sex from all the women members in an attempt to increase the numbers of his followers by getting them pregnant. After a new member of the cult, an escapee from a mental hospital, beat a child at the compound, Thériault performed ‘surgery’ on the child.
When the child subsequently died, Thériault castrated the man as punishment. After authorities learned about some of the activities at the ranch, they removed all the children.
On 26 February 2011, 63-year-old Thériault was found dead near his cell at Dorchester Penitentiary. His death is believed to be the result of an altercation with his cell mate, Matthew MacDonald, a 60-year-old convicted murderer from Port au Port, Labrador in Newfoundland, who was charged with the killing. MacDonald had stabbed Thériault in the neck with a shiv, walked to the guards’ station, handed them the weapon, and proclaimed “That piece of sh*t is down on the range. Here’s the knife, I’ve sliced him up.”
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