tiny that required them to leave be-
hind their ordinary lives.“Ti” (Net-
tles) and “Do” (Applewhite), as they
called themselves (referring to notes
in the musical scale), headed west-
ward in 1973 on a “trip into the wil-
derness” to find their calling. On the
West Coast, they learned from alien
voices that they would be martyred
and taken to another planet. Those
who wished to join them in that jour-
ney would have to undergo a meta-
morphosis, which required giving up
property and human attachments
and being celibate, since sex took en-
ergy away from “the Process,” as they
called that metamorphosis. Their
followers were told that they could
transform their human bodies into
eternal, extraterrestrial beings, at
which time UFOs would come to
take them “home.” Little is known
about them over the next years except that they
dashed from place to place expecting to board a
UFO. In 1985, Ti died from cancer. Do declared that
she had come from another planet to teach him the
Process and that she was returning to the “level be-
yond human.”
Do and his followers reappeared in public in
1993, making a video, advertising in magazines, and
creating a Web site to gain followers. The site was ti-
tled “Heaven’s Gate,” and became the popular name
for the group. They also formed a business for creat-
ing Web sites. The members took new names, which
ended inody, indicating that they were children in a
class learning the Process. Their time was tightly reg-
ulated; when they left the group to conduct busi-
ness, which they always did as male and female pairs,
they had to phone in regularly. After two members
were arrested for vagrancy because they had no
money, members carried five-dollar bills and quar-
ters for the telephone calls. When the group ate out,
they ordered the same menu items, and they were
described as dressing identically and having the
same hair cuts, making it difficult to tell apart the
women from the men. Also in 1993, Do and seven
other men were castrated to remove their sexual
drive, and others were taking chemicals to reduce it.
By then, Do was suffering from coronary arterio-
sclerosis, and his message became more urgent. In
1996, the group rented a mansion in Rancho Santa
Fe, an affluent community near San Diego, with
money they made from their Web site business. They
rose before dawn every morning to scan the sky for a
sign that they would soon be taken from Earth.
When Comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997, rumors
that a UFO had been sighted behind it led the
Heaven’s Gate members to conclude that Ti was
coming to take them home. They bought a powerful
telescope to observe the comet.The Suicides Because they believed that it was nec-
essary to leave their “earthly containers” behind, Do
and thirty-eight followers (twenty-one women and
seventeen men) committed suicide in a meticulous
fashion over a three-day period beginning on March- Initially the dead were identified as men, since
the police found them dressed alike in black cloth-
ing and black athletic shoes with close-cropped hair,
making it difficult to determine their gender at first
glance. Their faces and chests were covered with
purple shrouds. The dead had five-dollar bills and
quarters in their pockets, and their bags had been
packed neatly in the dormitory-style rooms. They
had taken phenobarbital mixed in pudding and had
drunk vodka before lying down in bed. The last two
had cleaned up the house and sent farewell videos
and a letter to a former member before committing
414 Heaven’s Gate mass suicide The Nineties in America
Marshall Applewhite.(AP/Wide World Photos)