Music professor said he was shepherd who would put followers on a spaceship
This is King Do, the cult leader who took 38 people on their final, fatal journey
By John Hiscock in Los Angeles
THE Heaven's Gate cult members who died in a mass suicide were following the teachings of their leader, a former professor of music known as King Do, investigators believe.
Marshall Herff Applewhite, 66, who was among the 39 dead, believed that he was an extraterrestrial shepherd whose mission was to lead the chosen aboard a spaceship into eternity.
For more than 20 years he had preached a mixture of scripture and space philosophy, travelling America with a woman named Bonnie Lu Trusdale Nettles.
They met in the early 1970s when Applewhite was in hospital in Houston with a heart blockage and Nettles was his nurse.
Calling themselves Bo and Peep or simply The Two, they gathered a band of disciples who sold everything to join what Applewhite called the Human Individual Metamorphosis.
Many of the followers were Star Trek fans and believed that a flying saucer was going to carry them off.
As police continued to inform relatives of the 21 men and 18 women who died in the rented mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, information about Applewhite poured in.
In the early 1970s Applewhite and Nettles were among America's best-known devotees of UFOs and at one time their followers were known as the UFO Cult.
They had a big success in Walport, Oregon, in October 1975 when more than 20 people joined, some leaving children. The group travelled America, often recruiting on campuses.
Then, The Two disappeared - apparently after a previous attempt at mass suicide failed.
Michael Soper, spokesman for the Oxford-based Contact International, a UFO research organisation, said Applewhite, Nettles and about 1,000 followers planned to "transcend" in Oregon in 1978.
"They thought a beam of light would come down and take them into a spacecraft," he said. "When that didn't happen and they didn't die either, the membership dwindled to about 50. Applewhite and Nettles vanished and Applewhite reappeared in the early 1990s."
When he resurfaced, he proclaimed that he was now Do - pronounced Doe - and that he and his followers were presenting humanity with "a final offer" before Earth was "recycled".
Nettles had died of liver cancer but Applewhite declared that she had ascended into the Kingdom of Heaven under the name Ti where she became a deity called Older Member.
For the past two years the group, now calling itself Heaven's Gate, lived in various rented houses around San Diego and last October moved to Rancho Santa Fe.
From there they ran a successful computer business designing web sites.
Ranging in age from 20 to 72, they dressed all in black, called each other brother and sister and many of the men had themselves castrated according to a former follower, Rio D'Angelo.
Last year they published a book containing a mixture of Christianity and outer-space beliefs and featuring "exit statements" that resembled suicide notes.
On their Heaven's Gate web site the group posted a message which described their desire to leave Earth and rendezvous with a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.
The message read in part: "The joy is that our Older Member has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp's approach is the marker we've been waiting for. We are happily prepared to go with Ti's crew."
In haunting videotapes made shortly before their deaths, members spoke of their joy at their pending "step forward". One woman with close-cropped hair said: "Maybe they're crazy but I don't have any choice but to go for it because I've been on this planet for 31 years and there's nothing here for me."
The suicides took place over several days, with the victims taking vodka and phenobarbital and putting plastic bags over their heads.
The bodies were discovered by Mr D'Angelo, who had received two videotapes and a farewell letter.
"By the time you read this, we'll be gone - several dozen of us," said the letter.
"We came from the Level Above Human in distant space and we have now exited the bodies that we were wearing for our earthly task, to return to the world from whence we came - task completed."
