| First, they packed their suitcases neatly and dressed themselves in black - shirts, pants and tennis shoes. Then, one by one over a period of several days, they ate applesauce or pudding laced with a barbiturate and chased it with vodka. Finally, again one by one, they lay down on cots or bunk beds and, joyously believing they were destined to rendezvous with a heaven-bound UFO, put plastic bags over their heads to hasten death. Two members of the Heaven’s Gate cyber-cult remained alive to remove the plastic bags, drape the 37 bodies in purple shrouds and tidy up. Then, they killed themselves the same way. And when police, acting on a telephone tip, entered the rented California mansion last week, the appalling scene they stumbled upon and then recorded on videotape stunned millions around the world. "All indications are that this was an immaculately planned mass suicide," said San Diego County medical examiner Brian Blackbourne.The 21 women and 18 men of Heaven’s Gate, many of them computer programmers who called themselves monks, are the most recent victims of charismatic and self-styled messiahs who claim that group suicide leads to spiritual rewards. They may have already begun killing themselves on March 22 when, near Quebec City, five members of the Solar Temple cult died by suicide in a house fire. And experts suggest that delusional preachers are no longer the only hazard lying in ambush for the naïve and gullible; the Internet may have become so godlike to the on-line impressionable that they fall easy prey to cult recruiters. The Heaven’s Gate commune, led by former choirmaster Marshall Applewhite, rented the 830-square-m mansion in the exclusive Rancho Santa Fe enclave last October from businessman Sam Koutchesfahani for $10,000 a month. Milton Silverman, the owner’s lawyer, would later tell reporters that the celibate, teetotalling, non-smoking tenants belonged to a religious computer group and believed they were angels. "We didn’t know them," said Virginia Ingebrand, a neighbor. "We never saw them." But Nick Matzorkis, owner of a computer company called Interact Entertainment, said he had met about 15 cult members who had designed some Internet Web pages for him. They talked, Matzorkis said, of the comet Hale-Bopp, which is currently visible in the night sky. "They explained to me that they believed there was a UFO following behind that comet and using it as a shield so it could not be detected by Earth and that that UFO may very well be the one to take them away." On the night of March 25, a Matzorkis employee and former cult member identified only as Rio got a parcel from the group containing two videotapes and a note saying the members had committed suicide. The tapes showed them, evidently in high spirits, saying goodbye. Matzorkis said the letter explained that by the time it was read, "they will have already, as they described it, shed their 'containers,' which is I guess what they used to describe their bodies." Matzorkis and Rio drove to the house at 18241 Colina Norte in Rancho Santa Fe on Wednesday. Rio went inside, then ran back out "white as a sheet," recalled Matzorkis, who summoned the police. The first San Diego County sheriff’s deputies to enter the house were quickly driven back by the smell of what they thought might be poison gas. It turned out to be the stench of rotting bodies. Thirty detectives and crime lab technicians wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves found the victims lying on their backs, with hands and even eyeglasses at their sides. Each had pocketed a $5 bill and some change. They ranged in age from the early 20s to 72. The task facing San Diego County officials was made easier by the fact that police found either birth certificates or driver’s licences on most of the cultists. One was identified as Calgary-born Erica Ernst, 40. Some of the men bore old scars showing that they had been castrated, presumably to ensure their celibacy. Applewhite, their 66-year-old leader who died with them, was the son of a Presbyterian minister who worked as a choral director at the University of Alabama in the 1960s. After a near-fatal brush with heart disease in the early 1970s, he left his wife and two children to embark on a nomadic life with Bonnie Nettles, a nurse he met during his convalescence. "There was never a coming together in that we were bed partners," Applewhite said in a 1992 videotaped message to his followers. "But there was something that compelled us to spend time together and search together." That search led them to devise their own faith, called "The Process," in which they presented themselves as heavenly messengers from outer space. In 1974, they persuaded a group of Oregon townspeople to give away all their possessions, and their children, and travel with them to Colorado to be picked up by a spaceship. When the spacecraft failed to appear the following year, the pilgrims became fed up. "Bo" and "Peep," as Applewhite and Nettles then called themselves, were subsequently jailed briefly for possessing stolen credit cards. Afterwards, they continued on their mission while avoiding publicity. But in 1993, Applewhite and his followers - Nettles died some years previously - appeared in Chicago and he resumed preaching. On one of the videotapes sent to Matzorkis’s employee, Applewhite said, "We have no hesitation to leave this place, to leave the bodies that we have." As outlandish as their reasoning may sound, it stimulated discussion in various circles. The Atlanta-based magazine Angel Times took issue with the cultists’ claim to be angels. When angels visit people to offer help or convey a message, said editor-in-chief Linda Vephula, they disappear afterward. "Therefore, if these guys were truly angels, they would not leave their bodies behind," she said. James Love of Atlanta, who preaches that the peoples of northern Europe are the lost tribes of Israel, said the concept of space travel was not at odds with the Bible, "though whether there’s a spaceship hiding behind a comet I wouldn’t know." Meanwhile, specialists in computers and psychology warned of the impact of the Internet on imagination and the emotions. "In many ways we’re sort of creating a great machine that is penetrating more and more of our lives," said San Francisco Internet writer Erik Davis. "In that sense there’s something like a terrestrial god about it." While the Internet is in some respects "the ultimate technology, at the same time it resurrects an older feeling about liberation from the body, about moving into a virtual fantasyland." It was possible, he added, to "lose touch with the immediate physical reality." And Margaret Singer, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, said young people "spend hours in front of their computers, and the only friendships they have are other people on the computer. And they’re open to being too trusting." Cults, she said, sought out "average, normal, bright people" who often are not "street-smart." Steve Silverman, who monitors hundreds of religious and cult Web sites in San Francisco, said cults often looked for computer-knowledgeable followers who could help make a cult self-sufficient. Heaven’s Gate was a prime example, he said, because it earned money designing Web pages for other companies. Yet the obscure opening statement on its own Web page provided little insight into the lives and motivation of Heaven’s Gate’s mystical members. "Whether Hale-Bopp has a 'companion' or not is irrelevant from our perspective. However, its arrival is joyously very significant to us," said the Web manifesto. "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." Maclean's April 7, 1997 Author RAE CORELLI with ANNE GREGOR in Los Angeles |
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