Heaven's Gate: The UFO Cult
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The suicides took place over three days. The barbiturates were mixed in with applesauce or pudding. Some members topped off their deadly dessert with vodka. Once they had a stomach full of drugs and alcohol, they laid down on carefully prepared beds adorned with white sheets. They all had similar, close-cropped haircuts, and they were all dressed the same: black and white Nike sneakers, dark pants, and long-sleeve, dark-colored shirts.

Each shirt had an identical triangular patch on one sleeve. The patch read "Heaven's Gate Away Team". They'd been away, here on Earth. Now, they were going back. Once they were lying down, they pulled plastic bags over their heads. At least two members didn't have lethal drug doses in their system. They died from suffocation. For the rest, the bags were there as a backup of sorts.

It worked. 39 people set out to kill themselves over three days in March of 1997. They all succeeded. There were 21 women and 18 men. They went in groups, lying prone on beds in different parts of the sprawling mansion they'd been renting. The first 15 were helped along by the next 15. Then the next 15 were helped along by the remaining group. Then, it seems, seven out of the last nine were helped along by two remaining members.

who then took their own lives when their task was done. Three days after the first group died, the police were tipped off. Sheriff's deputies found the bodies. All but two, the last two, had shrouds over their heads. Among the 39 dead were musicians, artists, computer programmers, an ex-postal worker, the son of a telecommunications executive, and a member who had joined the group as a teenager.

They were fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. Thomas Nichols, brother of Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura on the original Star Trek series, had joined the group in the 1970s. He was one of the 39 dead in the house in Rancho Santa Fe, a well-to-do neighborhood in San Diego County. The group, known as Heaven's Gate, wasn't simply trying to die by suicide. They had something else in mind.

and they had ultimate faith that, by killing themselves, they would ascend to the level above human. Because, high in the sky, far above the Earth, was the visible Hale-Bob Comet, coming close to Earth for the first time in over 2,000 years. But to the people in Heaven's Gate, it wasn't just a ball of rock, dust, ice, and gas. It was their ride. They had been told, and believed,

that a spaceship was following in the comet's wake, and that they only had this chance to catch it, even if catching it meant they had to die. While this was effectively the end of Heaven's Gate, it's important to understand the path that led them to carry out what is still the biggest mass suicide on US soil. Understanding how cults work is incredibly important. They are far from a thing of the past. And while not all of them end in suicide or murder,

Falling prey to a cult can change your life forever, and usually not for the better. So listen as we explore the Heaven's Gate cult in an effort to understand what would lead such an eclectic group of people to willingly, some even say happily, choose death by suicide. Part one, and peep. One of the many things that set the Heaven's Gate cult apart from other well-known cults was its leadership. Most cults have one leader,

often a charismatic and magnetic person. Without a leader like this, any cult will find it hard to maintain the strict and often heinous protocols it takes to keep members in the group. But Heaven's Gate started with two leaders, Bonnie Lou Nettles and Marshall Herff Applewhite. Their unique relationship would come to encompass a perfect storm of spirituality, New Age beliefs, and Christian theology.

allowing them to attract followers as they searched for meaning. Both Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Applewhite were born in Texas. Nettles came into the world in Houston in 1927. Applewhite was born four years later in Spur, Texas. Both were born into religious families, but Applewhite more so than Nettles.

His father was a Presbyterian minister and Applewhite was active in the religion, even briefly considering a career as a minister before becoming a music teacher. Bonnie Nettles veered away from religion and toward spirituality as an adult. In the early 70s, around the time she and Applewhite first met, Nettles regularly practiced séances and sought the advice of fortune tellers.

She believed that a long dead monk named Brother Francis spoke to her, giving her guidance and instructions. During one visit to a fortune teller, Nettles was told she would soon meet a tall, mysterious man with fair skin and light colored hair. Soon after, she met Marshall Hurf Applewhite, who fit this description closely. There is some confusion as to exactly where and when the two met. Nettles was working as a nurse at the time,

and Applewhite said he was in a hospital visiting a friend when she walked into the room. According to Applewhite's account, the two of them immediately felt a connection. However, Applewhite's accounts of events were often clouded or morphed by embellishments. When Applewhite and Nettles met in 1972, they were in their 40s. Nettles, dark-haired with wide-set eyes and a matronly appearance, had been married since 1949.

She had four children with her husband. Applewhite had been married, but had gotten divorced after it came to light that he had a sexual relationship with a male student while teaching at the University of Alabama. He had two children with his wife before their divorce in 1965. He moved to Houston after the divorce, where he became a music teacher at the University of St. Thomas. By all accounts, he was well-liked by his students.

He also was a fairly successful singer during this time, performing with the Houston Grand Opera. But he was still struggling with his sexuality and still trying to find his place in the world. Although details are murky, accounts state that Applewhite left the Catholic University of St. Thomas much like he'd left the University of Alabama. Although he wasn't fired, he agreed to leave for mental health reasons. Whether this was prompted by another relationship with a male student is unclear.

but far from unlikely. One account states that Applewhite had a near-death experience thanks to a heart problem soon after he left St. Thomas. And while he was recuperating in the hospital, a dark-haired nurse came in to check on him. This was Bonnie Lou Nettles. It seems likely that Applewhite's version of events was skirting the truth. Whether he was visiting a friend or he was a patient in the hospital is of little consequence.

The fact that they met would spark the beginnings of the Heaven's Gate cult. What's clear is that they both felt a strong connection upon meeting. Nettles did an astrological reading for Applewhite, and the two quickly fell into an easy friendship. Applewhite later said that he felt certain the two had met in a past life. He also said that he saw Nettles' face transform upon meeting.

revealing the dead Franciscan monk that supposedly guided her astrological readings and gave her spiritual instruction. It didn't take long for the pair to start spurning their previous interests, moving instead toward a life of nomadic proselytizing. They named themselves Bo and Peep, saying that they were two shepherds searching the earth for lost sheep. At this point, Marshal Herf Applewhite had already been estranged from his ex-wife and children,

But Nettles, or Peep, was still very much the wife and mother she had been for years. Apparently, she found what she'd always been looking for in Applewhite, although it's important to note that their relationship was never sexual. Nettles soon divorced her husband and left her family behind to travel with her new platonic partner, spreading a strange mishmash of spirituality and science fiction injected into Christian beliefs. Many years after their meeting,

Applewhite described what he believed had happened. He insisted that two individuals from heaven came down to earth and chose two bodies called vehicles to inhabit as they went about their work. This was destiny, according to him, as the bodies had been set aside from birth. But it wasn't until the two humans were in their forties that they realized their purpose, to spread their message and save humanity from itself.

He also said that these two spirits brought to Earth a number of other spirits, students, according to him, that they'd been nurturing in past lives. These spirits found their own vehicles, which eventually found their way to Applewhite and Nettles. Essentially, these spirits and their vehicles became their followers, the first acolytes of what would become known as Heaven's Gate. It was all predestined, and their job was to help these students reach the next level.

the level above human, as the two leaders called it. But Applewhite even went a step further, stating that they weren't just invisible spirits that came down from the stars to inhabit the bodies. He said that they came down in other bodies and were riding in spaceships otherwise known as UFOs.

When the UFOs landed on Earth, the alien bodies the spirits had been inhabiting were no longer of use. So they were discarded and left to be secreted away by the authorities. This belief, among others, contributed to the group's other name, the UFO Cult. Leaving their old lives behind, Applewhite and Nettle started traveling the Southwest, honing their beliefs and working odd jobs to survive.

It was during these early days, before they found any true believers, that they decided they were the two witnesses mentioned in the book of Revelations. They thought that they would be killed and left to lie in the streets for three and a half days before they would be taken away in what the Bible described as a cloud, but what Nettles and Applewhite interpreted as a spaceship. When this happened, all those who had accepted their message would be physically taken onto the spaceship to ascend to heaven.

All those unbelievers would be left behind to perish during Armageddon, the recycling of the earth, as Applewhite later put it. What Applewhite and Nettles didn't know was when this would happen. Frustratingly, they weren't able to access the full breadth of the knowledge they'd gained in their past lives. They only had information revealed to them on a need-to-know basis, little bits at a time.

but they had to have faith in themselves. After all, their higher spirits were the ones who had decided to give themselves the information piecemeal as needed. Like other religions, the mishmash of beliefs relied heavily on faith. Faith that they would be told what they needed to know when they needed to know it, and that they would be able to help their students reach the evolutionary level above human through their teachings. But before they could teach their students, they had to find them,

And that's just what Bo and Peep set out to do. Part 2: Recruitment and Refinement One of the earliest recruitment meetings held by Nettles and Applewhite was in Studio City, Los Angeles. A woman named Joan Culpepper allowed them to use her house for the meeting, which attracted around 80 people. After the group's mass suicide made headlines, Culpepper told the LA Times what she remembered of the pair.

She noted Applewhite's wide, bright blue eyes, along with their proclamation that they would be assassinated and then travel to heaven in a spaceship, along with anyone who wanted to follow them. It's important to note here that, in those early days, there was no talk of their followers having to die to ascend to the level above human. As the two messiahs, only Applewhite and Nettles would die. Everyone else could travel with their bodies to heaven.

Although Culpepper herself couldn't buy into the strange religion after the two-hour meeting, she said that nearly two dozen people immediately began preparing to follow the pair up to Oregon. How these early meetings were structured is somewhat unique among cults. Normally, it takes weeks or even months before people are ready to drop everything and leave their lives behind. But with Heaven's Gate, there didn't seem to be any blatant indoctrination tactics at work.

Applewhite and Nettles, the two as they took to calling themselves, simply presented their beliefs and then opened the meetings up for questions. However, it would be a mistake to think that there wasn't some charisma and know-how at work here. Applewhite, by most accounts, did the vast majority of the talking. In fact, in much of the footage still around today, it's rare to see Nettles speak at all.

although she sat next to Applewhite at the front of the room. Given that Applewhite's father had been a minister and much of Applewhite's own childhood had been spent traveling around to the next service, it's easy to see that he was familiar with public speaking. He'd also been a teacher and a well-liked one at that. His demeanor was calm and confident and his appearance unassuming. But we must also remember that this was the early 70s. Not only was there a growing interest in UFOs,

But America was also coming through some very hard times with the Vietnam War, the clash of the civil rights movement, and the counterculture movement. Many of the people they attracted were young and frustrated, disturbed by the fading ideals of the 60s and the trend toward consumerism as a new kind of religion. In one small Oregon town, the pair gained a whopping 34 followers after their meeting.

The meeting was advertised by hand-drawn and then copied flyers put up around the town. In large, black letters at the top, there was one word: UFOs. Below, a bulleted list read: Why they are here, who they will come for, and when they will leave. The flyer went on to describe a broad overview of the two's beliefs. For such a small town, the disappearance of so many people made headlines.

It was the beginning of a public outcry against the group and others like it. After all, people were abandoning their families to become members of Heaven's Gate, leaving behind bewildered parents, spouses, and children. It was amid this public outcry that the two announced that their first round of recruitment was finished. They took their followers and secluded themselves in the wilderness, holding no more public meetings. Instead,

they focused on the followers they did have. This media storm of bad publicity also gave them an easy out. They decided that the assassination they had predicted was not literal, but metaphorical. After all, they had just experienced character assassination in the press, being called cult leaders, hoax perpetrators, and crackpots. Their prediction had been right. They had been assassinated, albeit not in the way they'd originally thought.

and that meant their ride was coming shortly. They had to prepare their followers for physical ascension to heaven on a spacecraft that would come down from the sky. Estimates vary, but by the time their first round of recruitment ended in 1976, they had somewhere around 200 members. But as they continued refining their group, that number would dwindle down to only the most devoted followers.

Not long after their announcement, the two took 70 members to a campground in Wyoming and tried to teach them how to move past their humanness. They made members wear similar clothing and enacted something called "tune time," where people would sometimes go days without speaking. They gave tuning forks to members, who then used them to try and harmonize with the musical tone of the fork, a kind of meditation unique to Heaven's Gate.

No one was forced to stay if they didn't want to. In fact, the leaders asked 19 people to leave at one point, deciding that they weren't dedicated enough to learning how to get to the next level. Things went on like this for some time as the group moved from campground to campground around the Western States. But then, a couple of members received significant inheritances, allowing them to move into proper homes. This was the start of many years where there was little publicity about the group.

Since they were no longer actively searching for new members, they weren't drawing the ridicule they had previously experienced. Applewhite and Nettles refined their teachings and tactics during this period. The goal was to teach their members, and themselves, how to move past their humanness.

They did this in several ways over the years. In those early days, it involved cleanses, drinking nothing but a mixture of lemonade, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper for months at a time. Sexuality was the epitome of humanness, so members were forbidden from engaging in sexual activity. Even hugging wasn't allowed. Gender was also very human, so members got identical haircuts. Their heads buzzed close to the scalp.

They also wore identical clothing, baggy pants and untucked, loose-fitting shirts. If you saw them on one of their outings from afar, you might think they were all men, given their hair and the way they dressed. And if you saw them up close, you might think they were all cancer patients. In an apparent effort to eliminate the human tendency toward individuality, the group developed precise methods for doing everything.

Even something as seemingly innocuous as making pancakes had to be done a certain way. They had protocols in place for how hot the burner should be, how much batter was to be used for each pancake, how long they were to be cooked on each side, and even how much syrup was poured on when they were done. Their days were tightly structured, and eventually, everyone was assigned a partner with which they were supposed to do everything during the day.

These were called Czech partners. They intentionally set people up with partners whom they weren't likely to be sexually attracted to, and to prevent social relationships, which were considered too human, they rotated partners regularly. While the early days and the recruitment techniques of Heaven's Gate had little in common with traditional cult tactics, the changes implemented after recruitment was paused in 1976, mirrored many cult indoctrination tactics.

It's common for cults to ensure people have very little free time when their lives are controlled, especially in a communal way, as in Heaven's Gate. They feel that they are working toward a goal that's greater than themselves. This also helps to ensure that they don't get much time to think about what they're doing. When there's a strict regimen and you're expected to work all day, you don't generally have the energy to consider what's happening to you. By assigning each member a partner,

The cult could ensure that no one was doing anything against the cult's rules or guidelines for moving to the next level. If one partner saw the other being too human, they would report it to Applewhite or Nettles, who would then deal with it however they saw fit. But for the most part, there wasn't any corporal punishment. There were no overt threats. Those who wanted to leave could. So those who stayed generally tried their best to do whatever they were told.

Some members even tried to one up each other by becoming a better non-human than the others. For nearly a decade, things seemed to be going well for the group. They were working toward the goal of eternal life in heaven, ensuring they would be ready when the spaceship came down for them. Several times during this interval, Nettles and Applewhite predicted their ride would come soon. And when no spaceship descended from the sky on the predicted date, the two were quick to admit that they'd been wrong.

Still, they never gave up hope and neither did many of their followers. But then in 1985, something happened that would force them to reevaluate their belief system and lead both directly and indirectly to the mass suicide many years later. Part three, two minus one. Applewhite and Nettles had given themselves the names Bo and Peep respectively. They'd also called themselves the two.

but they had other names for themselves as well. To their followers, they were known as T and Doe from the musical scale. T, Nettles, and Doe, Applewhite, were both fans of musical theater and film. The sound of music was a favorite. The cult itself also went through many names over the years. At one point, they called themselves Human Individual Metamorphosis or HIM. They were also briefly known as Total Overcomers Anonymous.

members were also given different names, another way to overcome their human identities. Most of these names were six letters long and ended with the same three letters, O-D-Y. Some members took a portion of their original name and tacked on Odie at the end. One former member known as Sawyer took on the name Soyody. Others would take on names influenced by a descriptive factor. One of the tallest members was given the name Tallody.

Nettles and Applewhite were sometimes called the older members, and it's important here to know just what they thought that meant. According to the two, they had already achieved next level status. They would be allowed to board the spaceship when it landed, but they were staying behind on Earth to spread the message and save those who would accept their philosophy.

This philosophy had been built mostly on the back of Nettles' notions of spirituality, astrology, Gnosticism and New Age beliefs. She had been the one to solidify the philosophy, and Applewhite had often deferred to her for guidance in this realm. In fact, some say that it was Nettles who founded the cult, and that Applewhite was her first follower. Regardless, they were in it together now. They were, essentially, more than human.

Better than human. Gods, in a sense. But as is often the case with those claiming to be gods or evolved beings of any kind, there came the problem of mortality. In 1983, Nettles had a surgical procedure to remove one of her eyes due to cancer. The doctor at the time informed her that the cancer was spreading through her body, but she couldn't accept it as the truth.

After all, she and Applewhite still had to ascend to the next level in their physical bodies by boarding a spaceship. That was what they told their followers, and that was what they apparently believed. But in 1985, Bonnie Lou Nettles succumbed to liver cancer. Despite forbidding members of Heaven's Gate from contacting their loved ones, Nettles had been sending regular letters to her daughter, Terry. When those letters stopped, Terry Nettles wasn't sure what to think.

It wasn't until nine months after Bonnie Nettles died that her family was notified by cult members. There was no memorial, no funeral service, and no chance to say goodbye, even though she just died hours away from her daughter in a Dallas hospital. Nettles' death created significant cognitive dissonance among the group members. It challenged their beliefs that they were supposed to ascend to the level above human together with their bodies intact.

And while this threw Applewhite and other members for a loop, the group did not disband. At this point, they'd been living together, preparing for ascension for nearly a decade. And there was only one thing to do, revise their beliefs to fit what had happened to their older member. With Nettles gone, it was up to Applewhite to lead the group.

And given his more traditional religious upbringing, it was no surprise that he eventually came to the conclusion that Nettles was God the Father, meaning God's spirit had chosen her vehicle or body to inhabit. Applewhite, as you might guess, held the spirit of Jesus within.

This revision didn't happen all at once. It was a gradual shift. Whereas they'd believed that they would be able to take their bodies with them into heaven, they eventually concluded that doing so might not be possible. If they were to reach the next level, they might have to leave their bodies behind. Eventually, Applewhite insisted that Nettles had left her body behind and was waiting for them at the next level. And in keeping with the new philosophy that Nettles was God and Applewhite Jesus,

He told followers that he was still in contact with her, they were still communicating, and if the members of the group wanted to talk to her, they could do so only through Applewhite. But this drastic shift in philosophy wasn't the only change now that Applewhite was at the helm. One day, Applewhite apologetically approached a fellow male member and announced that his vehicle was becoming attracted to the male member's vehicle.

What Applewhite meant, in the cult's parlance, was that he was sexually attracted to the follower. This led directly to the idea that castration was a viable option for male members. Applewhite held a meeting in which he explained that he'd had a nocturnal emission and was thinking about castration. After all, they were trying to move past their human desires. And if they could stop battling their sexual urges after a surgical procedure, it would help them reach the next level.

One male member, generally considered the most devoted, volunteered to go under the knife first. One of the female cult members had been a nurse before joining the cult, and she'd worked with a doctor who performed many castrations. She would do the procedure. At first, everything seemed to go well. But when the woman finished the procedure, the patient's scrotum began to swell, causing him to moan and writhe in pain.

the man needed a hospital. But the members were afraid that their beloved leader would go to jail for allowing the illegal medical procedure. Evidently, Applewhite himself was horrified, telling other members that he'd gone too far to let something like this happen. Eventually, the man was taken to a hospital. He made a full recovery and no one was arrested.

despite the scare. The group eventually found a doctor who would do the procedure. A total of eight male members were voluntarily castrated, Applewhite among them. This was just one extreme example of the lengths members were willing to go in service of their goal of reaching the level above human. And as Applewhite tightened control of the group, things started to change. A couple of members left voluntarily without a harsh word. In fact, Applewhite let them go willingly,

even giving them money and plane or bus tickets to their chosen destination. But for those who remained, Applewhite wanted assurances that they were in it for the long haul. These assurances, along with the change in philosophy brought about by Nettles' death, paved the way for the carefully structured and performed suicides to come. But there was still one more missing ingredient, one thing they needed before they could leave this earth for heaven above, and that was a ride.

a spaceship to be exact. 10 years after Bonnie Nettles succumbed to cancer, two astronomers, one amateur and one professional, would simultaneously discover a comet blasting through space toward Earth. Their names were Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp. The members of Heaven's Gate would see the Hale-Bopp comet in the sky and decide that it was just what they'd been waiting for. Part four, saying goodbye.

Many members of Heaven's Gate were smart and capable professionals. They had day jobs that helped keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs while they prepared to leave Earth behind. One such job was a graphic and web design business called Higher Source. It was through their knowledge of the internet and design that they started putting their message out there again in the 1990s. They called it "The Last Chance to Advance Beyond Human."

They chatted with others in online forums, put out ads in newspapers, and even did a public access style show in which they detailed their beliefs, which was mostly Applewhite talking into the camera with his wide eyes, white hair, and professorial demeanor. They suggested that the apocalypse was at hand, saying that the Earth was about to be recycled or spated under. Essentially, their message was this: human civilization is coming to an end,

If you want to enjoy eternal life, Heaven's Gate is your last, best chance. Through this effort, they reconnected with several ex-members that had left over the years. They also gained some new members. And for the first time in many years, they decided to get back on the road to really push for new recruitment. Aside from the handful of new and ex-members, their efforts were by and large a failure. They were ridiculed, rejected, and even laughed at.

Even in those early days of the internet, people were not hesitant to say what they thought of the crazy UFO cult. After much effort and little to show for it, the group believed that they had done all they could for the people of Earth. The masses didn't want to heed their message. They took it as a sign that the end was coming. Their ride was approaching.

Added to this were the incidents at Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993, where federal authorities got involved with groups not all that different from Heaven's Gate, with disastrous consequences. Applewhite saw this as a kind of war on free-thinking religious groups like his. It all played into his notion that the end times were at hand. In his thinking, staying on Earth would be a far worse fate than exiting to be with nettles in the kingdom of Heaven.

It was around this time that the group members started referring to themselves as the "Away Team" or "Crew". Despite strict controls still levied by Applewhite, the members were allowed to watch certain television shows and movies. Star Trek was a favorite. In their minds, they were an away team in much the same way as members of the Star Trek crew were an away team when they left the ship to go explore a planet.

They were away here on Earth and were preparing to go back to their home, the kingdom of heaven, and their spaceship. They started referring to this as their graduation. They had been in class to learn how to shed their humanness, and now class was coming to an end. It was time to move on, to graduate, to exit. With this philosophy firmly in the heads of all the members, Applewhite called a meeting in San Clemente, California in 1994.

He wanted to know what everyone thought about suicide as a way to graduate. He described how it would be done. "With barbiturates and food, it was the most peaceful way he could think of." Not long after this meeting, five members left the group. They weren't browbeaten or threatened. They were seen off with tears, hugs, and sorrowful goodbyes. Then, in 1995, the Hale-Bopp comet was discovered. It soon became visible to the naked eye,

This bright smudge in the sky gave rise to a number of doomsday predictions. Fears of Y2K's the new millennium approach only added to the furor. But it wasn't just the comet that got people riled up. It seemed that there was something accompanying the comet. Another bright point of light following behind it. This became known as the Hale-Bopp Companion. Immediately, people started talking about UFOs and space aliens. This was exactly what Heaven's Gate had been waiting for.

Since the earliest days, when it had been only Applewhite and Nettles, celestial bodies were a large factor in their beliefs. They looked to the stars for signs, waiting for the time they knew would come, the time when a massive spaceship would come to pick them up. However, there was some controversy as to whether there really was another object following in Hale-Bopp's wake. And eventually, the truth came to light. It was a fallacy, a fraud. There had never been a companion,

there was only the comet made of rock, gas, ice, and dust. But this didn't seem to matter to Applewhite and those in Heaven's Gate. They'd seen the writing on the wall. Companion or not, they felt sure that Hale-Bopp was the sign they'd been looking for. Applewhite told his group that he'd been in touch with Nettles, his older member, as he called her. She had verified it. They were going home.

Although it had been discovered in 1995, the comet didn't become visible to the naked eye until May of 1996. After disappearing in December of that year because of being too closely aligned with the Sun, the comet became visible again in January 1997. It was bright enough to see from even the most light-polluted cities. Heaven's Gate knew that the comet would be closest to Earth in late March of 1997, so that was when they decided to make their exit.

It's important to remember here that Applewhite had first brought up the idea of suicide in 1994. Members had nearly three years to get used to the idea of leaving their vehicles behind and to their way of thinking. It was better than the alternative of staying on Earth, being left behind as the planet was recycled. Many of the members had been in the group for nearly 20 years at this point. They had left their old selves behind and completely adopted these new personas.

They fully believed in what they were doing. Most of them hadn't talked to their families in years or decades. Applewhite had no idea that he was a grandfather. Other members had corresponded once or twice with their loved ones over the years, usually through terse messages with little depth or substance. In October 1996, the group rented a 9,200 square foot mansion in Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego.

They made monthly payments in cash for the house as they prepared to graduate. In December, they decorated the mansion with Christmas fair. Footage shot at the time showed a joyous occasion. Stacks of presents, lights, garlands with colorful bows, and members baking 39 cakes. They sang together and put on a talent show. They seemed happy in the footage, maybe even relieved that, after so many years of waiting, they were finally going home.

After Christmas, they took trips to SeaWorld, Mexico, and Las Vegas. But it wasn't all fun and games. There was still some work to be done. Knowing they would be leaving, they decided to spread their message through their website. The site, heavensgate.com, is still up and running today, maintained by two former members.

On it, you can see several excerpts from their book, an exit press release video, video transcripts, and even exit statements by three students. On March 20th, two days before Hale-Bopp was predicted to pass closest to Earth, the members sat down and videotaped exit interviews to be distributed to humanity in hopes that some would follow them to the kingdom of heaven. In these interviews, members did not speak of death as the end,

They talked of it as removing an old set of clothes, their bodies, in exchange for a newer, eternal set that wouldn't experience all those human emotions and feelings they'd been working so long to move past. Several members did get emotional, but it seemed that they were more concerned with the souls of the rest of humanity. They seemed sad that they couldn't convince many more of what they knew in their hearts to be true.

One member, Denise Thurman, known as "Juanody", made a remark in keeping with her love of Star Trek. She said, "And one last thing we'd like to say is 39 to beam up. Thank you." Offscreen, other cult members laughed and clapped at this reference. One member, who had joined in 1994, left the group shortly before they took their own lives. His name was Rio DeAngelo, and he approached Applewhite in the weeks leading up to their planned exit.

saying he felt he should stay behind and write about Heaven's Gate to spread the word. Both he and Applewhite decided it was part of a higher plan for them. Three days after the group killed themselves, D'Angelo was the one to call in the tip to authorities. He'd received a package of instructions through the mail detailing what the group wanted him to do after they made their exit.

Among these instructions was a request that he go to the house and videotape what he saw there before he tipped off the authorities. The footage shot by D'Angelo is eerie in its silence. Members' faces are concealed by purple shrouds. The baggy black pants and black and white Nike shoes each member wore are easily visible against the white sheets underneath. There are no signs of violence or struggle.

If it wasn't for the shrouds, the clothes, and the sunshine brightening the house, one could easily assume these people were just asleep. Of course, each group but the last had people to clean up after them, to tidy up for the cameras. There were two syringes found, presumably used by the last two members to inject themselves with drugs. Although one might expect Applewhite to have been one of the last to leave, evidence suggests otherwise.

Judging by decomposition, it seems that Applewhite had been in the second out of the three groups to go. Most members had a wedding band on the ring finger of their left hand. These bands signified their commitment to their older member Applewhite and his older member Nettles. They also had $5.75 in their pockets. According to one former member, this was based on a Mark Twain story in which that amount was the cost to ride the tail of a comet to heaven.

The mass suicide made front page news around the world. This was how many family members found out their loved ones were dead. By and large, the reaction to this mass suicide was much as it had been to their most recent recruitment attempts. The members of Heaven's Gate were dismissed as lunatics. They became the butt of jokes. And while Gallo's humor is certainly a way for people to deal with things like this, there was only surface level research into what had led this to happen.

The members of Heaven's Gate were intelligent, kind, caring, and self-aware. They came to believe wholeheartedly in the teachings of Ti and Do. They were not predisposed to believing seemingly outlandish claims. And most of them came to the group while searching for something more, something to improve their lives through spirituality. Many of them made perfectly clear during their exit interviews that they were leaving this world of their own free will. But the question remains,

Was it really of their own free will? Or had they been manipulated into believing that they would ride to heaven in a spaceship? And perhaps more importantly, if they had been manipulated, what could have been done to prevent them from taking their own lives? If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.