Conviction New religious movements Burnt River and Coboconk, Ontario, Canada · 1993

Roch Thériault and the Ant Hill Kids: murder and aggravated-assault convictions

Request a correction or reply

Record class

Separate register

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

See cited record

Organization

No organization assigned

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

Contemporaneous court reporting records Roch Thériault's 1989 guilty pleas to aggravated assault and unlawfully causing bodily harm, a twelve-year sentence, and his 1993 guilty plea to second-degree murder with a life sentence. The Ant Hill Kids were an isolated apocalyptic commune in which Thériault styled himself as 'Moses' and exercised religious and communal authority. This dossier avoids unnecessary graphic detail, distinguishes the separately convicted followers, and does not attribute the group's conduct to the Seventh-day Adventist Church or apocalyptic Christianity generally.

Cited record

Sources

Maryboro Lodge Museum / Kawartha Virtual Museum, 'Cult Leader Roch Theriault on Trial' (archival excerpts from the Lindsay Daily Post, 1989-1993).: The local museum reproduces contemporaneous court reports recording the guilty pleas, the twelve-year assault sentence, the later second-degree-murder plea and life sentence, and Thériault's authority as the commune's self-styled 'Moses.'
Reuters / Los Angeles Times, 'Canadian Cult's Leader Sentenced in Maiming Case' (Oct. 12, 1989).: Contemporaneous international reporting records Thériault's and three followers' guilty pleas to assault charges and his twelve-year sentence.
The Canadian Press / Global News, 'Man gets 25 years for killing cult leader Roch Theriault in prison fight' (Mar. 5, 2012).: The Canadian Press retrospective records that Thériault was serving a life sentence imposed in 1993 for the murder of a commune member.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://maryboro.ca/story/cult-leader-roch-theriault-on-trial/ Legacy citation preserved without a normalized source tier or evidentiary-role code. SHA-256 67b1f4042890c3fde4e4304af76ea0ef453e7384e8bde2309cf344f08fc27264
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-10-12-mn-328-story.html Legacy citation preserved without a normalized source tier or evidentiary-role code. SHA-256 252e6ad869223462c91f418229ee2f0b696a084993402b1c5631a29c2a2be588
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis: https://globalnews.ca/news/219182/man-gets-25-years-for-killing-cult-leader-roch-theriault-in-prison-fight/ Legacy citation preserved without a normalized source tier or evidentiary-role code. SHA-256 d6ab94aad7bfe7f61f78299c35d094577c84a5316da415f76bbc535fa62bbb64
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

Named in this record? Request a correction, report a changed disposition, or submit a response.

Related record

Related cases · New religious movements

Browse all 69 New religious movements records

← Explore all cases