The dead in Rancho Santa Fe, an elite suburb of San Diego, showed no visible signs of blood or trauma. Besides wearing similar clothes and the same shoes, they had one more thing in common.
All 39 people were members of the “Heaven’s Gate” sect, also known as the “UFO Sect”. They were so convinced of their leader’s spiritual and extraterrestrial promises that there was nothing they could not do.
They thought they were more special than the rest of the world.
Heaven’s Gate was founded in the 1970s by Marshall Applewhite, known as “Do”, and Bonnie Nettles, known as “Ti”. Members of the cult believed that they would transport their souls to another dimension with a spaceship hidden behind the comet Hale-Bopp.
Like many sects formed both in this period and today, Heaven’s Gate’s core belief was that its members were more special than all the rest of the people on Earth.
According to their belief, they would take their souls to the next level with the UFO.
Ti and Do convinced their followers that the chosen ones would also survive bodily, in a technological revival of the belief that a UFO would descend to Earth and lift the spirits of those who remained loyal to the cult to the next level. Over time, Ti and Do managed to attract members’ attention by reaching out to disillusioned people in the community and religious spheres.
Members left behind contact with the outside world and all their possessions.
For several years, Applewhite and Nettles required their followers to follow increasingly awkward and stricter rules, including cutting off all contact with family and friends and encouraging the adoption of an asexual appearance. Applewhite, for example, advocated asexuality and had several male cult members involved in castration operations.
In 1975, Applewhite and Nettles persuaded a group of people from Oregon to abandon their family and possessions and move to eastern Colorado, where they promised an extraterrestrial spacecraft would take them to the “kingdom of heaven.”
They believed that they would take their souls and bodies to a higher level with the spacecraft hidden behind the Hale-Bopp star.
Nettles and Applewhite said that human bodies were only things that could be abandoned in favor of a higher physical existence, but Heaven’s Gate membership was dwindling as the anticipated spacecraft never arrived. In 1985, Applewhite’s “sexless partner” Bonnie Lu Nettles died, and Applewhite continued her search for members alone.
In the early 1990s, the cult resurfaced. Shortly after the discovery of the comet Hale-Bopp in 1995, Heaven’s Gate members became convinced that behind the comet, a spacecraft hidden from humans was coming to Earth.
Some cult members were castrated.
In October 1996, Applewhite rented a large house in Rancho Santa Fe and told the owner that his group was made up of angels of Christian descent. In late March 1997, as part of its 4,000-year orbit of the Sun, comet Hale-Bopp passed close to Earth in one of the most impressive astronomical events of the 20th century.
They committed suicide with the thought that they would go by spaceship.
Applewhite and 38 of his followers committed suicide by drinking a deadly mixture of phenobarbital and vodka, hoping to leave their bodies and enter the spaceship. These suicides lasted several days in groups of 3.
Members even left wills behind them. When found, they were all wearing similar black outfits and Nike shoes, and were covered with purple covers.
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