Of kingdoms and comets:
Cult's mass suicide shocks nation
"They always believed the body was nothing more than a vehicle, like a car, to drive around."
former member Dick Joslyn, who left the group in 1990
They were found lying on their backs, arms at their sides.
Each body was covered across the face and chest with a
purple shroud, and they were all wearing black pants and
black Nike athletic shoes.
Thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate cult took part in
a mass suicide believed to be the biggest ever on U.S.
soil. They killed themselves with a cocktail of drugs and
alcohol, and were found in the rooms of a mansion they were
renting in Rancho Santa Fe, California.
The cult members, who all had $5 bills and identification
in their pockets, expected to emerge after death in a
spaceship that they believed was following the Hale-Bopp
comet and would carry them to a higher plane of existence.
Heaven's Gate members ran a successful business designing
Web sites for the Internet, and the mansion where they died
was described as neat and organized. Cult members even had
a seating chart for watching television.
They died over a period of days. Each member ingested
phenobarbital mixed with apple sauce or pudding and drank
vodka. Some of them put plastic bags over their heads to
ensure death.
The cult's leader, Marshall Herff Applewhite, apparently
founded Heaven's Gate in the late 1970s. He led his
followers around the country for more than two decades
before the group settled in California.
Cult member Rio DiAngelo, who left the group four weeks
before the mass suicide, discovered the bodies on March 26
after receiving two videotapes describing the members'
intentions.
A videotape left behind explained the cult's apocalyptic,
UFO-laden theology. And videotapes used for recruitment
surfaced after the suicides, revealing that members had
begun in 1994 to talk openly about leaving Earth for what
they called "The Kingdom Level Above Human," which they
said was a "real, physical" place.
Applewhite also preached celibacy, believing there was no
gender at the "next level." Long before the suicide, he and
other cult members had been castrated. Both male and female
cultists had affected a unisex look, wearing
buzz-cut hair and shapeless clothes.
The Heaven's Gate leader may have convinced the cult
members he was dying of cancer to encourage them to commit
suicide, although an autopsy revealed he was not.
DiAngelo, whose real name is Richard Ford, told Newsweek
magazine that Applewhite was frightened by the 1993 police
siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, and
believed the FBI was stalking his group.
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