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Things to beware of in 1997:
Attempts to persuade you that 'these laws are neccessary'; especially
when 'these laws' refers to laws inhibiting, retracting, or otherwise
resulting in encroachments upon personal liberties or outright attempts
to repeal constitutionally granted freedoms.
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From the Chicago Tribune, 3/28/97:
MYSTERY DEATHS
Suicide with a vision of apocalypse
By Charles M. Madigan TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
ANCHO SANTA FE, Calif. -- In the confusing
rhetoric that surrounds this mystery, the
victims spoke of themselves as being among the
chosen, angelic presences who would escape the gritty
bonds of Earth and rise to a brighter reality with
God in the eternity of space.
They would accomplish this in a
space ship, which was hiding
just behind the brilliant tail
of Hale-Bopp, the rare comet
making a close enough pass
toward Earth to touch the souls
of those who believe God sends
messages in the night sky.
"It was an immaculately planned
mass suicide," said one of the
chief investigators of the case
Thursday as police in this
enclave of multimillion-dollar
mansions and dream-wealth
Californians struggled to
understand just what happened,
and why.
Thirty-nine members of a cult called "Heaven's Gate"
packed for their space journey, dressed in black from
neck to toe. They were clean down to the soles of
their new Nike running shoes. Some had pages of paper
instructions to help them on the first phase of their
journey.
They put $5 bills and some quarters in their pants.
They also slipped identification papers into the big
pockets of their black shirts so everyone would know
who they were. Some of them even were found with
passports or birth certificates.
They formed three groups to prepare for the trip. The
first group of 15 then ate a mixture of either
pudding or applesauce, spiked with a barbiturate.
They washed that down with a vodka drink, sat back to
relax and die, comforted and watched all the time by
the second group of 15. Their job apparently was to
make certain that all the bodies were in the correct
pose, arms at the side, feet a few inches apart,
relaxed, comfortable, covered from navel to forehead
with a rectangular piece of purple cloth.
Group two followed exactly the same course, monitored
by the final members, in group three, and the last
two people who died. The authorities know that
because only two people had plastic bags over their
heads and no purple cloths to grace their remains.
There was no one left to help them on their journey.
There were enough plastic bags with elastic strings
on hand so that all 39 of the victims could have
opted for suffocation instead of death from the
alcohol-drug overdose. Because they are said to be
faster, plastic bags over the head are common in
drug-alcohol suicides.
The process took days, with the bodies of the first
dead decomposing even as the members of the final
group consumed their pudding and awaited the quiet,
unyielding embrace of the alcohol and phenobarbitol
that would kill them.
That is all police had to say about the matter
Thursday afternoon, a full day after the suicides
were discovered.
The case of the death of the obscure cult known as
Heaven's Gate is just that simple and that
complicated at the same time.
A collection of people identified thus far only by
age, sex and state of residence abandoned what they
viewed as their human shells, apparently at the
urging of a man who has been on this strange mission
for more than 22 years, so they could go to space to
be with God.
They had a lot to do with computers, sending many of
their messages over the Internet and making their
money through a company called Higher Source, which
designed Web pages, usually for clients in the
entertainment business.
But they were hardly alienated
young computer nerds.
Sample Web sites
designed by The youngest Heaven's Gate
Higher Source: victim was 26. The oldest was
72.
* Pre-Madonna
* Kushner-Locke There were 21 women and 18 men.
Company Two were African-Americans; the
* The San Diego remainder were white, including
Polo Club one or two Hispanics. People who
* British Masters had hired them to construct Web
* Keep the Faith pages considered them polite,
* 1-800 Harmony professional and highly
Music & Video talented, if a little strange
because of their closely cropped
hair and unisex dress.
They were good, if a bit unusual, neighbors to the
super-wealthy who populate this part of the
California dream.
There were signs something was happening.
Of late, the Heaven's Gate Web site on the Internet
had become more and more apocalyptic, particularly as
the Hale-Bopp comet approached. It spoke of beings
existing at a higher level and of the impending
journey to that place. It was all mixed in with talk
about Jesus and his father God and how time was
approaching to complete God's plan.
While a lot of this helps serve as something of an
explanation, none of it makes much sense to the
uninitiated.
"Why did they do this?" asked San Diego County
Sheriff Bill Kolender in his department's first
formal attempt to explain the mass suicide.
"I have as many penetrating questions as you do."
Adding a philosophical note, he said, "We may never
really know."
San Diego County Medical Examiner Brian Blackbourne
was the one who called the deaths immaculately
planned. He seemed surprised that the mansion in this
wealthy hilltop community where the tragedy played
out was as clean as a house awaiting special guests.
There were no marks on any of the bodies indicative
of violence. There were no signs of struggle.
There was no mess. The living disposed of the trash
and tidied up before they took their place in line to
die.
There was a strange three-minute police video of the
scene of the suicides, disturbing on one level
because the whole process seemed so orderly and neat.
The video showed only a few of the bodies and was
much more solemn and deliberate than even the mildest
of the TV police reality shows. Doors would open into
darkness then a light would illuminate a bunk bed
with its occupant in eternal rest, with everything
just so.
The bodies on bunk beds rested on white quilts, with
their hands at their sides. A pair of glasses was
folded near the knees of one body. Some of the
fingers seemed blue. Two sheriff's deputies were
briefly hospitalized after being overcome by the odor
of decomposition.
By Thursday afternoon, police were reluctant to say
much at all about identification of the victims.
Hundreds of families missing children and other loved
ones had called to ask whether they were in the
group. In one case, the medical examiner said, the
answer was yes.
He would not say who that was.
Because of what was found at the
scene and the early autopsy
results, the medical examiner said
the vodka-phenobarbitol
combination was the likely killer,
enhanced by plastic bags. But it
could takes weeks for all the
toxicology reports to come in and
many more weeks before the "cause
of death" slot can be filled in.
Even while police were trying to
figure out where the case would go
next, a clearer picture began to
emerge of Heaven's Gate and the
man believed to be at the head of
the cult.
He has long been identified by
Heaven's Gaters as "Do," but most
likely was a man named Marshall
Applewhite, said to be among the dead by CBS News,
tagged as head of the cult by ABC, and quite familiar
to experts who have watched the development of cults
in the United States over the past few decades.
On Thursday, he apparently was the balding man in the
black shirt with white buttons who played the central
role in a video sent by Heaven's Gate to former
members and media contacts.
It looks like something out of an old "Twilight
Zone," with the now-wrinkled old man sitting on what
looks like a cheap plastic lawn chair, but
manipulated in such a way that there are three images
of him, one stacked behind the other.
"You can follow us, but you cannot stay here," the
man said in a segment of a video in which he promises
his followers they will be rising to "a higher
level."
"The planet Earth is about to be recycled. Your only
chance to survive or evacuate is to leave with us."
CBS News found an old video, this one from 1974, in
which Applewhite spoke of rising from the dead. At
that time he was claiming that he and his followers
would be dead for 3 1/2 days, and then they would
just get up and walk away.
Then, he said, he would find life after death in
outer space.
There also was a report of an arrest in Texas years
ago for car theft which came after a policeman
checked out Applewhite's license when he began
talking about having a life in space.
The latest video includes a visit from some
followers, including a woman who discussed her
reasons for following Applegate's suggestion that she
end her life.
"Maybe they're crazy for all I know," she said. "But
I don't have any choice but to go for it, because I
have been on this planet for 31 years and there is
nothing here for me.
"And they were saying to the person I was with that
they felt the last, final ingredient would be for the
vehicles to be dead, you know, what humans call
'dead'. And so I said 'Great, You know if that's what
it takes, that's better than being around here with
absolutely nothing to do."'
From another direction, there was a report that the
modern Heaven's Gate group might be an extension of,
or an imitation of, a 1975 movement started by
Applewhite and a woman named Bonnie Lu Trusdale
Nettles, who died in 1985. Another cult expert traced
distant roots to something called "Go In Peace,"
which first showed up in 1955 and included people who
believed they were sent by God as prophets to clean
up Jesus' mistakes.
Applewhite was a music teacher at the University of
St. Thomas in Houston before emerging as the leader
of a small band of people who seemed to believe
spaceships would be taking them to heaven someday.
Applewhite and Nettles called themselves "The Two"
and embraced a philosophy that encouraged followers
to give up all their stuff, including friends, lovers
and children, and devote their lives to the group.
But there are big gaps in this Heaven's Gate history
that police undoubtedly will be trying to fill over
the next few days. There is some hope that a better
explanation for what happened might be inside any of
the many computers they removed from the house. A
police commander said Thursday that the San Diego
investigators have not had time to crack the
computers yet.
The 39 bodies were discovered Wednesday afternoon by
a Beverly Hills businessman, Nick Matzorkis. One of
his employees, a former Heaven's Gate member, had
received a package that included a letter and
videotapes announcing the group had committed
suicide.
The video and letter state the cult members believed
a UFO would be coming by to pick them up, hidden
behind the tail of the comet. The group's Internet
page said whether Hale-Bopp actually had "a
companion" was "irrelevant."
Tribune staff writer Vincent J. Schdolski reported
this account from Los Angeles, Tribune staff writer
Charles M. Madigan reported from Chicago and Tribune
staff writer V. Dion Haynes contributed from Rancho
Santa Fe.