On the morning of March 26, 1997, in a large, luxurious mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, California, a horrific discovery shocked the entire nation. 39 people, all dressed in identical black uniforms, all bearing the same haircut, nearly all laid out with a purple shroud covering their faces, lay dead in bunk beds.
The 39 dead men and women, ranging in ages from 26 to 72, were members of a little-known, bizarre religious cult, which believed in a theology consisting of a blend of apocalypticism, UFOs, New Age beliefs, esoteric Christianity, and spiritualism.
This is the story of Heaven’s Gate and the psychology behind it. It is a troubling, yet revealing story of blind adherence, religious devotion, and mass suicide.
Marshall Applewhite
The story of Heaven’s Gate could not be told without addressing the charismatic, troubled man who started, and ended, the group’s journey.
Marshall Herff Applewhite was born on May 17, 1931, in the small, rural town of Spur, Texas, to an extremely religious and conservative family. From an early age, Applewhite, whose father was a Presbyterian minister, took an interest in religion.
Enrolling in a theological university, Applewhite wanted to become a minister like his father. His interest in religion and philosophy would, he hoped, enable him to devote his life to the cause of his theology. While in college, however, Applewhite’s interest in religion subsided as he developed an affinity for music. After a brief stint in the military, Applewhite went on to become a music teacher and taught music as a professor in the University of Alabama.
Unfortunately for Applewhite, he soon came to realize he was a homosexual. In his very religious family and community, Applewhite’s status as a homosexual was frowned upon with great disdain, and he had to repress his true feelings.
This was not easy. Applewhite soon began a romantic relationship with a male student at his university, a relationship which cost him his job as a music professor. Applewhite’s wife divorced him after learning of the relationship, leaving him upset and confused.
When Applewhite’s father died in 1971, it sent his troubled son into a bout of severe depression. Applewhite checked himself into a psychiatric hospital soon afterward, after he began to have schizophrenic episodes and hallucinations, including one where he believed himself to be Jesus.
It was at this hospital that Applewhite would meet a woman who would reinvigorate his interest in religion and spiritual philosophy, and ultimately lead him to his death and the deaths of over three dozen others.
Bonnie Nettles and the birth of TELAH
While in the psychiatric hospital, Applewhite met a woman named Bonnie Nettles, with whom he developed a non-romantic friendship. Like Applewhite, Nettles also had an interest in theology and philosophy. She told Applewhite that she and him were “soulmates”, alien spirits inhabiting human bodies, which she referred to as “vehicles”.
Applewhite and Nettles soon left behind their families and formed a group called TELAH, short for The Evolutionary Level Above Human. They believed that all members of the group would have to leave behind their “material possessions” in order to proceed to the “Next Level”, an evolutionary level above common humanity.
At first, this group did not gain many converts, but, during the Human Potential movement craze in the late 1970s, TELAH’s membership grew to over 80 members, most of them young men and women seeking religious meaning in their lives.
Although the group lived a strictly immaterial lifestyle, isolated from their family and the rest of society, there was no talk yet of an apocalypse or mass suicide among the members of TELAH.
However, the doctrine of TELAH and Applewhite would change drastically in 1983.
The Turning Point
In 1983, Bonnie Nettles was diagnosed with a severe form of cancer, which required her to have an eye removed. Despite the surgery, doctors told Nettles that the cancer was too widespread, and that her chance of recovery was almost nil.
Nettles, along with Applewhite, declared the doctors to be ignorant, as Nettles declared she couldn’t die, as she and Applewhite would have to “ascend” together to the next level.
Refusing any further treatment, Nettles returned home to Applewhite.
Unfortunately, Nettles’ condition only worsened, with the cancer soon spreading to her liver.
On January 20, 1985, Bonnie Nettles died from liver failure in Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas.
With her death, Nettles sealed the fate of Applewhite and his group.
After Nettles died, Applewhite went into into another, more severe, bout of depression. He lost much of his hair, grew thin and pale, and was left grieving, confused, and upset.
Applewhite became convinced that Nettles couldn’t have died, but had simply “shed” her “human vehicle” and ascended to “The Next Level”. Applewhite then began to become convinced that Nettles would one day return to earth to transport Applewhite and the rest of TELAH to the Next Level, where they would live in eternal paradise.
In the early 1990s, Applewhite first began proposing the idea of suicide in order to reunite with Nettles. He renamed his organization “Heaven’s Gate”, and changed his doctrine. Now, Applewhite declared that, in order to reach the Next Level, all adherents had to leave behind everything that was human, including their human bodies, or “vehicles”.
With Heaven’s Gate’s membership now hovering around 40 members, Applewhite moved the group to California in the mid-1990s. There, Applewhite discovered he could spread his doctrine over the Internet. Applewhite created the domain heavensgate.com as the group’s website, which still remains up and running to this day. Heaven’s Gate also created a web-design company called Higher Source, which advertised space-themed graphics.
In the late 1990s, Applewhite moved himself and his 40-something followers to a rented mansion in the upscale community of Rancho Santa Fe, located near San Diego, California.
All members of Heaven’s Gate, male or female, had to dress and look exactly the same. All wore black uniforms, black shoes, bore short-cropped, military-style haircuts, and carried only a five-dollar bill and a roll of quarters in their pockets. All members abandoned their given names in favor of a one-syllable name ending in in the suffix “-ody”, allegedly meaning “children of the Next Level”.
In reference to his days as a music teacher, Applewhite referred to himself by the name “Do”, and referred to the deceased Nettles by the word “Ti”.
In another extraordinary decision, Applewhite, probably in order to repress his homosexual urges, voluntarily underwent castration, as did eight other male members in Heaven’s Gate. Sex as an act was forbidden in Heaven’s Gate, and those who had “slippages” in sexuality had to confess their mistakes to the group openly, although they were never subjected to physical abuse.
Depression and apocalypse
Meanwhile, Applewhite was constantly on the lookout for a sign that Nettles was returning to earth to transport him to the Next Level. He also became increasingly paranoid and convinced the world was coming to a violent end.
In the 1990s, Applewhite purchased over a dozen weapons, including 3 rifles, 5 handguns, a collection of scopes, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which he kept in a rented storage locker.
Although the reason behind the stockpiling of weapons is still unclear, it appears Applewhite may have considered a shootout with police as a method of mass suicide.
However, in 1993, another cult made national news in a similar situation. The Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, which, like Applewhite’s group, also believed in apocalypticism, engaged in a shootout with ATF and FBI agents trying to serve a search warrant. Four agents and seven Davidians were killed. A month later, over 80 cult members committed mass suicide by setting their compound on fire during an FBI assault.
The fiery, violent end to the Waco Siege seems to have changed Applewhite’s mind.
There would be no gun battle, no blaze of glory, no fiery end to Heaven’s Gate.
Hale Bopp
In 1997, the world watched in awe as Hale-Bopp’s comet appeared in the night sky. It was a phenomenon not seen since 1813, and it was a very memorable event for all those who saw it.
Among those who took notice and interest in the comet was Marshall Applewhite. He became convinced that this comet was the sign he had been waiting for all those years.
In Applewhite’s mind, the comet meant only one thing: Bonnie Nettles had returned for him.
Applewhite became convinced that a spaceship with Nettles was following the comet’s tail, waiting for Applewhite and his followers to beam up and enter the Next Level.
After the Hale-Bopp comet appeared, the Heaven’s Gate website was changed to display a cryptic “RED ALERT” gif, and a message was posted stating:
“Hale-Bopp brings closure to Heaven’s Gate [...] our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level Above Human (the "Kingdom of Heaven") has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp's approach is the "marker" we've been waiting for -- the time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the Level Above Human to take us home to "Their World" -- in the literal Heavens.
Our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally coming to conclusion -- "graduation" from the Human Evolutionary Level. We are happily prepared to leave "this world" and go with Ti's crew.”
On March 22, 1997, Applewhite took 38 of his followers out on an unprecedented trip to a restaurant, where they celebrated the arrival of the comet.
Returning home, Applewhite and his followers recorded a final goodbye video to their families and the few members who chose not to follow them to “The Next Level”.
“What we’re doing is we’re going home”, said one cheerful young cult member in his goodbye tape. “This is the happiest and most joyous thing you can imagine.”
The suicides, the aftermath, and the “Next Level”
On March 26, 1997, cult member Rio Diangelo returned to the group’s mansion to find it eerily quiet, with all the windows covered.
Entering through an unlocked side door, Diangelo was overwhelmed by the horrid stench of decay. Putting a cloth over his nose, Diangelo discovered the dead bodies of his friends lying in their beds, all wearing identical black uniforms, identical haircuts, covered by large purple sheets, and wearing a patch reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team”. Each corpse had a 5 dollar bill and 3 quarters in their pocket. Computers all throughout the house were flashing a “Red Alert” screen.
Applewhite and 38 other members of Heaven’s Gate had committed mass suicide by drinking vodka mixed with applesauce, laced with lethal amounts of phenobarbital. Some of the members had fixed plastic bags around their heads. They had killed themselves over the course of three days; 15 on the first day, 15 on the second, and nine on the third.
Applewhite was found in the master bedroom, covered by a purple sheet. Nearby was a framed illustration of a space alien.
Because Applewhite was covered by a sheet, investigators believe he was the third to last member to die. The only two members not covered by a sheet were two women, who are believed to have died last.
Searching the house, the only weapon investigators found was a 9mm pistol packed in one of the cult members’ bags. There was no sign of a struggle, no bloodstains or bullet holes, no executions. There was no shootout with police, no siege, no hostage crisis, and no murder. Unlike the violent cults at Shannon Street, Waco, and Jonestown, the members of Heaven’s Gate went peacefully and willingly, taking no other lives but their own.
Soon afterwards, in May of 1997, two more members of Heaven’s Gate, Chuck Humphrey (AKA “Rkkody”) and Wayne Cook, who were not present for the mass suicide, attempted to kill themselves in the same manner. Cook died, but Humphrey survived. Humphrey briefly ran a website called Rkkody.com, but, in February of 1998, Humphrey attempted suicide again. He went into a sealed tent in the middle of the Colorado desert, started his car, and ran a pipe from the exhaust into his mouth. This time, he was successful. Chuck Humphrey died from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was the last cult member to die, 11 months after the mass suicide in Rancho Santa Fe.
Why?
Since the mass suicide in 1997, Heaven’s Gate has mostly disappeared from the news, with the story appearing in the news every five years or so to mark the anniversary of the group’s mass suicide. Of the 45 people who were members of Heaven’s Gate in 1997, only about 3 are alive today.
There was one big question that plagued those who heard about the mass suicide. Why? Why had these otherwise healthy people, from all sorts of different backgrounds, all killed themselves in such a ritualistic manner? Why had they died so willingly and in such a devoted fashion?
I decided to find out why.
Contacting “Rep”
I first learned about Heaven’s Gate in late 2015, as I was reading about cults. I read more about Heaven’s Gate, and was astonished to find out that, not only was their website still up and running (unaltered since the mass suicide), but that the email address connected to a former cult member identifying him/herself as “Rep” (meaning “representative”), who would answer questions.
Twice, in 2016 and 2017, I established contact with one or more former members of Heaven’s Gate, although he did not identify himself by name.
“Rep” sent me a copy of the group’s book, entitled How and when Heaven’s Gate may be Entered, and two authentic videotapes created by the cult.
In my exchange of emails with the former member, who did not identify himself, he told me that he still believes that the other cult members, including Applewhite, did not, in fact, die, but simply “shed their old vehicles” and acquired new ones.
Furthermore, this member told me that he believed that “Ti and Do” (Nettles and Applewhite) were “wise, kind and only concerned with our ultimate welfare.”, indicating he still saw them as mentors who were right all along.
“Do you believe they are, in fact, in the Next Level?”, I asked.
“Yes, they are in the Next Level.”, came the reply, indicating he had not renounced the group’s beliefs.
I further asked him why he decided to remain behind.
“That was the instruction to maintain the site.”, he replied.
I was curious as to what he perceived the group’s doctrine to mean. I pressed “Rep” to explain what it meant to ascend to the Next Level.
I was told: “You would have to go through a lengthy training process to even have a chance to physically enter a craft and go into the Next Level.”
“Was it a mass suicide?”, I asked.
“It wasn’t.”, he responded. “They simply dropped their human bodies, took on new, space-capable Next Level bodies and departed the earth physically in a spacecraft. Only those 39 were exempted to do this under the care of the Next Level. No human can do this.”
Essentially, the member still believed that Applewhite and his “crew” were right all along, and that they had simply shed their human “vehicles” in exchange for a Next Level suit, which they used to board the spaceship.
When I asked “Rep” if he was going to go to the Next Level, he responded, cryptically, “We will, but not in this lifetime”.
Cognitive dissonance
This whole exchange made me think about cognitive dissonance, which is the tendency for an individual to experience a mental discomfort when confronted by two conflicting beliefs. In order to alleviate this discomfort, the individual will use the contradictions as evidence of justification of their original beliefs.
Now, to be clear, I do not mean any offense to the beliefs of the Heaven’s Gate member I talked to. He has every right to his beliefs, and I respect that, as well as the fact that he would talk to me at all.
But this does, in fact, shed a light on the role that cognitive dissonance plays in our lives, especially in forms such as this in cults.
To put it simply, when the Heaven’s Gate members committed suicide, they justified it through their beliefs that they weren’t ending their lives, just merely shedding their old “vehicles” in order to ascend to the Level Above Human.
This would explain the willingness with which the members drank the poisoned applesauce and vodka. They had devoted their entire lives to the cult, ostracizing family members, leaving behind all of their possessions, and effectively cutting off the outside world. When the time came, they must have justified their membership in the group by believing the teachings of Applewhite to be true.
So strong was this belief that, in the end, when the group committed suicide, the members never thought they were actually dying. They never believed that their lives were over.
To the contrary, they thought that this was the beginning of a new chapter in their lives, where they would advance to a new evolutionary level above human.
I could also see that the retention of this belief by the cult member I talked to was also a coping method. 40 of his friends were dead, including his two mentors.
To cope with this loss, it is natural to assume that this member, having lost so much in his time with the cult, would justify his suffering by believing that his friends and mentors could not be dead, and were simply alive and happy in whatever world they were in.
This was a sentiment echoed by former cult member Rio Diangelo (who I was unable to contact). In an interview with the BBC, Diangelo said that he does in fact believe that Heaven’s Gate is in the Next Level. “I’m happy for them, I’m proud of them.”, Diangelo said. “But I miss them.”
Thought control
When most people think of brainwashing and thought control, violence comes to mind. But this was not the case with Heaven’s Gate, which makes it all the more interesting as to how Applewhite was able to convince 38 people to not only devote their lives to Heaven’s Gate, but to also willingly take their lives when the time came.
By controlling the environment around a person, it is very easy to control the person himself. The members of Heaven’s Gate were forbidden from contact with the outside world and kept in a darkened mansion. The members were told they were above the rest of the world, and that conforming to mainstream society was a lost cause. They were told again and again that they were destined to live in space in eternal paradise with Applewhite and Nettles. Kept in isolation from the outside world, with Applewhite’s sermons as their only source of information, it is not surprising that the cult members were so devoted to Applewhite and the doctrine of Heaven’s Gate, as they were not exposed to any dissenting opinions.
Devotion: The idea of family
Despite common portrayals of Applewhite as a deranged, suicidal lunatic, Applewhite, in truth, had a very kind, charming, and loving demeanor. He referred to all of the members of Heaven’s Gate as “children of the Next Level”, and, despite the militaristic structure of his group, established a sense of community and family among the members.
The idea of a family is one of the most powerful bonding tools in existence. It is why some parents of mass murderers and psychopaths never truly hate their children. It is why the children of Kelly Gissendaner, who murdered her husband, were able to forgive her.
Truly, devotion to a family is so powerful that it is often prioritized over all else.
Since the era of tribes hundreds of thousands of years ago, we have always formed small groups of inclusion. We have always found a sense of belonging with one-another, be it through a tribe, a family, or a religion. Even today, religious terrorists often justify their actions by proclaiming that they fight for their religion and its people. The family unit is present and prominent in every historical era from all across the world. It unites the divided. It gives meaning to those lost and confused. And it provides a cause for those willing to make an ultimate sacrifice.
The very same concept was at play in Heaven’s Gate.
By 1997, most members of Heaven’s Gate had long before severed all contact with their family, so Applewhite and the other cult members were the only family they ever had. United by this bond, and dissatisfied with the outside world, the cult members had arranged a powerful bond between one-another.
Applewhite himself may have even fallen victim to his own methods. His connection to Bonnie Nettles, although not romantic, was a very close one. Nettles was probably the closest friend he ever had, and his devoted group was the closest thing to a loving, accepting family for him.
In the end, there is but a simple answer to the question of why the 39 members of Heaven’s Gate killed themselves so willingly. Their sense of community and family was one so powerful, so binding, that they were willing to die to preserve it.
Confliction
To this day, divisions remain over whether the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide was the right or wrong thing to do. Was it really that bad if they all killed themselves willingly? Is suicide ever right? Was this a mass suicide or a mass murder?
This question is especially divisive among the family members of the dead cultists. To this day, each family holds different views over the deaths of their loved ones.
One family, a mother of a cult member named Dave, said that, although she was sad that her son was dead, she found solace in the fact that he died peacefully, serenely, and surrounded by people he loved and cared for.
But two other parents, whose daughter Gale died in the mass suicide, had a different view.
“We’ve always said it was one suicide and 38 murders”, Gale’s father told the BBC. “Applewhite killed her”, added her mother. “Gale never would have killed herself knowing how much it would hurt us...Losing a child...it leaves an awful big hole in your heart.”
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