CULTS: The Last Transmission: Heaven's Gate

Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, we want to tell you about What the Fact. It's a new show from Conor Tomlinson, you know, from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum, and Carter Roy from Murder, True Crime Stories. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Conor's infectious energy will make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on Earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod. This is Crime House. Literally. They believed a spacecraft was waiting for them, hidden behind a comet. And the only way to get there was to die. Welcome to our brand new season, Crimes of Cults. I'm Sabrina DeAnaroga. I'm Corinne DeAnne. And this season, we are diving into some of the world's most dangerous cults and the charismatic leaders who promised salvation, but instead led their followers to ruin. We're going to ask the chilling question of when does belief become control? And how can you tell the difference between faith and manipulation, between hope and fear? Subscribe now and step inside the world of Crimes Of. The case of Heaven's Gate starts now. Welcome to Crimes Of Cults, a Crime House original powered by PAVE Studios. We're your hosts, Corinne Vienne and Sabrina Deanna Roga. Every Tuesday, we're exploring a different corner of the true crime universe, examining cases that left a permanent impact on society. And as the name suggests, this season is all about cults. So we are diving into some of the world's most dangerous cults and the charismatic leaders who promised salvation, but instead led their followers to ruin. If you're loving Crimes Of, please follow, rate, and review us wherever you listen. It helps us build this community and we love hearing from you. To get early access and ad-free listening, subscribe to the Crime House Plus community on Apple Podcasts. And you can also catch us on YouTube where we include visuals that bring every case to life. Today, we're covering Heaven's Gate, the cult that is the only cult that shocked the world in 1997 when all 39 of its members died in a coordinated mass suicide. Led by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, the members of Heaven's Gate believed that heaven was not a metaphor or a spiritual realm, but a literal physical destination. And there was only one way to get there, by UFO. And to earn a seat on this UFO, Marshall and Bonnie demanded absolute obedience to all members. They were told to cut off all contact with their loved ones, get rid of their belongings, abandon their birth names, suppress their sexual identities, and ultimately, to give up their lives. March 26, 1997. Detective Rick Scholey is in the middle of what should be a routine day. Because in Rancho Santa Fe, most calls are. Gated communities, manicured lawns, long private driveways. It's the kind of place where serious crimes are very rare. All of a sudden, static comes over his radio, followed by a voice asking Scholey to do a welfare check at a home in Colina Norte. Scholey turns his key in the ignition, the engine purrs to life, and he's on his way. During the drive, dispatch fills him in. A man named Rio D'Angelo called 911 to report something was wrong at the house. And Detective Scholey bets this will be like most other calls. Uneventful. By the time he and the other deputies arrive at 18241 Colina Norte, the sun is still high over the California hills. He makes his way up to the sun-bleached stucco house. The sprawling mansion is framed by immaculate landscaping. It's practically picture perfect. They approach the house, and Scholey knocks on the door. Sheriff's department. Nobody answers. They try again. Still nothing. Make entry, and almost immediately they are hit with the smell. It's overwhelming. Thick. Sweet. Putrid. The kind of smell that clings to the back of your throat. It's so strong, some of the deputies struggle to stay inside. And Scholey knows that this isn't going to be uneventful. In fact, he knows that something is very, very wrong. Scholey keeps moving inside, and despite the horrid smell, the house is immaculate. Everything is neat, too neat. Then he makes his way into the first bedroom. And at first it's hard to process what he's seeing. There are multiple beds, and at the foot of every bed are a pair of shoes placed identically. Black Nike decades. Lined up like uniforms waiting for inspection. Then there's the sheets. Purple. Carefully draped over all four beds. Covering, what Scholey is certain, are bodies. Bracing himself, Detective Scholey kneels and lifts the corner of one of the sheets. A woman lies underneath. She's still, calm, and there's a plastic bag sealed over her head. She is deceased. But despite the horror, her expression is serene. It's almost as if she's sleeping. Scholey takes a deep breath, places the sheet back, and begins to count. Room after room reveals the same grim discovery, each one more surreal. Then the last. Scholey counts one, two, three bodies, and it just keeps going all the way up to 39. Each body arranged with eerie precision. Everything about this scene feels controlled, intentional. 39 bodies laid out the same way, as if they had followed the same instructions. In all his years with San Diego Sheriff's Department, Detective Scholey has never seen anything like this. As more deputies arrive and carefully secure the scene, the scale of it truly begins to sink in. Scholey is left standing in the center of the house, nearly dumbfounded, with one chilling question remaining in his mind. What the hell happened in this house? Was this a mass murder, or something else entirely? I can't even imagine what it would be like to encounter that scene, because it is so confusing. Like, so many people dead. You're like, okay, well, is this a murder? But then there's nothing violent, outwardly violent, that you can see about the crime. So it's disturbing. But 39 dead bodies in this case baffled the police and truly anyone who's ever studied or heard about it. And unfortunately, we still don't have all the answers, because all the active members of Heaven's Gate died that day in March of 1997, taking a lot of the group's secrets with them. And even decades later, people like us, we're still trying to make sense of it all. Yes. And this crime scene alone is unlike anything. Anyone had ever seen before. So we're going to tell the story kind of through the perspective of the investigators who came across this scene in 1997, and how they pieced it all together. So initially, they treated this as a potential mass homicide. But like you were saying, nothing about that actually fit. There was no forced entry, no signs of struggle, no indication of violence. But they were like, we have to secure this as a crime scene and figure it out. So they started going through every piece of evidence. And they knew that on March 27th, 1997, a man named Rio D'Angelo had called 911 to report something going on at 18241 Kalina Norte in Rancho Santa Fe, California. But even that initial tip was a little bit strange. It turns out that Rio knew the people inside of the house, and he'd even been pretty close with them as recently as just a few weeks earlier. According to Rio, he had received a package in the mail, and the return address was, the address of the home in Kalina Norte. Inside of the package was a letter, two videotapes, a hand-drawn map to the house. So like, what a weird thing to receive. Yes. When Rio followed the map, I love that he was just like, I'll go on this adventure. And we'll talk about him more too, like later in the episode. Yeah. But yeah. So he follows the map, and he comes upon the house and the disturbing crime scene. So he called the police immediately, but it took more than two hours to actually have anyone show up, because they thought that they were just like, dealing with a standard welfare check. Rio didn't quite articulate exactly what was going on. And when they did finally arrive, the scene was so bizarre that they just didn't even understand how to go about it. It was just devastating. Yeah. And like we described in the narrative, inside the home, police discovered 39 bodies. All 39 people were positioned on their backs. All 39 of them were covered with identical purple shrouds, and each person was wearing the same clothes. almost like a uniform an all-black jumpsuit with a matching patch on their arms and a pair of black and white nike decades that were all placed at the foot of their beds the patches on their arms read heaven's gate away team and it had images of shooting stars it's like almost like a space suit in a way yeah in addition to these uniforms each of them had exactly five dollars and 75 cents in their pockets like exact change like the bills were the same the coins were the same everything was identical but like to anyone on the outside you're like how does any of this make sense like what how does this come together which is why a story police at first was like is this some type of like ritualistic killing yeah which is why they're like is this murder we don't know and 37 of the 39 victims had a plastic bag placed over their heads as if they had been suffocated which meant two victims did not have plastic bags over their heads but here's the thing the manner in which the bodies were found did not indicate that they had died of suffocation there were no signs of a struggle everyone appeared peaceful as if they had been sleeping so over the course of the next few days working closely with medical examiners and crime scene technicians investigators start to put it together the official cause of death for all 39 members or people was acute phenobarbital poisoning with alcohol followed by asphyxiation so all 39 victims ingested a lethal dose of phenobarbital a powerful sedative mixed with vodka and then some were mixed with like pudding or applesauce that was like what was found in their stomachs after losing consciousness a plastic bag was then placed over their heads causing asphyxiation even more shocking it was discovered that these 39 deaths did not occur in one single day it had been found that all 39 victims had been suffocated in three days which is even more like fucked up it's so fucked up because you would think that like someone would see someone else dead on the floor there and be like nope i'm not doing it anymore like they had the opportunity to back out that's how like deep in all these people were also i'm confused as to why they did the plastic bags when they were already getting a lethal dose of sedative was to ensure it and okay yeah so and that like they find this so they're obviously shocked they're like they don't understand what's going on what does this all mean so they piece it all together with evidence that they found in the house and it leads them to realize that this is not a mass homicide this is a mass suicide documents found inside the home detailed what was called the protocol and it explained the whole thing started about a week earlier on march 21st 1997 39 members of heaven's gate all shared their last meal they went to a marie calendar's restaurant and they all ordered the exact same thing a large turkey pot pie a side salad a slice of blueberry cheesecake with iced tea wait this is a great order when they got back home 15 of them because this is day one of the phase of the protocol as it was called in these documents 15 chose either vodka pudding or applesauce mixed with a lethal dose of phenobarbital and hydrocodone then one by one they carefully consumed the mixture and they laid down on these beds and they were able to eat it and they were able to eat it and they were able to the other members then tied plastic bags over their heads to make sure they did die after the drugs kicked in and when they passed away the other members straightened the bodies covered each of them neatly with a folded purple sheet and then the next day 15 more members followed that same protocol and on the third day six more followed that left just two members one devoted follower and their leader 65 year old marshall applewhite after completing the protocol they were able to eat it and they were able to eat it and they were able to that all other members in the first two waves had officially had no pulse they too died but they took their own lives they were the two that had no plastic bags over their heads which meant that they had to watch 37 people die and help kill 37 people before also doing the same thing and this is very morbid of me to even like want to know but i am curious what happened like when they all lay down and they were able to eat it and they were able to eat it and they were able to eat it and they were able to eat it and they were able to eat it and they were able to eat it and they were able to eat it and like are they quiet are they listening to something are they singing something are they just like randomly chatting i don't know i just can't imagine no like what you go through after you take it knowing what's going to come but then you're like laying next to some of your closest friends well when i think about jonestown too like yeah i mean granted that was a much bigger scale but like that's a don't drink the kool-aid yeah did people have second thoughts about it did anyone try did so like jonestown we actually know jonestown we know but i mean with this oh yeah yeah yeah yeah because jonestown had survivors jonestown had kids jonestown had i know it's so people who like second guessed and escaped i know this one we we don't know we don't know this isn't just a story about death this is a story about like how far people are willing to go for their beliefs and it is confusing if you're not in it to try to understand it right and how can someone psyche be led to this place like how long does it take how is it manipulation but the truth is it's not happening overnight right yeah so with all the forensic evidence investigators realized that this was a mass suicide not a mass murder mass suicide but why why did 39 people willingly die by suicide in such a manner police slowly found evidence all over the house that supported this there were written statements from those who had died piles of computer equipment and even documents explaining exactly how they would go about dying and then there were the tapes the earth exit statements which were videos where the members introduced themselves and would say their final goodbyes oh they're so killing i can't imagine sitting down and doing that in one video two young men sit side by side and they don't look scared they don't look coerced they actually look excited one of them smiles and says this is the happiest day of my life i've been looking forward to this for a long time i've been looking forward to this for a long time i've been looking forward to this for a long time i've been looking forward to this for so long from my perspective this is the answer to everything the other emphasized that their involvement in heaven's gate and what they were about to do was entirely their own choice he explained we've always had free reign to come and go to believe or not believe and then another member gushed i can't express how good i feel about what i'm doing right now and how good i feel about being here the opportunity the gift is overwhelming i am the happiest person in the world yeah which is even more confusing to like watch these tapes of people like declaring that they are the happiest so incredibly happy and then about to yeah do what they did but for investigators the tapes only made the whole thing more mysterious and that is when they began to piece together what we now know as heaven's gate cult on one earth exit statement and that's what they were called earth exit statements literally feels like a movie right yeah like a sci-fi movie yeah like you're about to get on your ufo and travel to mars and you don't know when you'll be back but like you're gonna go have new civilization on another planet but one member told viewers to go visit the heaven's gate website to learn more about their mission so authorities pull up this website and they found it had been updated the very same day that the suicides had started and it read hail bops approach is the marker we've been waiting for the time for the arrival of the spacecraft to take us home to the literal heavens our 22 years of classroom here on planet earth is finally coming to conclusion graduation from the human evolutionary level brought up more questions than answers yeah here's what they found and again it's important to note that everything we do know is from like what was on the website and from members who had at some point left the group so we don't really have the exact details we don't know what happened the moment of the deaths or like what even evolved in the last few days like it could have really yeah exactly spiraled past what other people have even said so what they discovered was that the group's leader marshall applewhite was fascinated by a hail bop comet which was soaring past earth in 1997 this was like a big thing it was so bright that it could be seen for 18 months without a telescope when we were so young that like i don't remember that but i'm sure it was a really exciting astrological event astronomical five astronomical how old are we four four yeah we're yeah four yeah yeah we're not even four no memory three and a half but marshall was interested in hail bop for far more than its beauty he believed that it was being followed by a ufo and that this ufo was on its way to earth to take him and the members of heaven's gate to a higher dimension that they called the next level but to that and for the ufo to take them to the next level marshall believed that all of them had to shed what they called their vehicles their human bodies we like to call them meat suits but marshall and heaven's gate called them vehicles to them their vehicles were bodies that were just temporary modes of transportation that they wouldn't need once they got to the spacecraft so from the group's perspective what the investigators were seeing was that was not a tragedy, but it was their graduation to the next level. level yeah so to put it in like simpler terms in one succinct sentence investigators uncovered that this mass suicide was the result of a cult all of which these members were convinced the spacecraft was traveling with the hail bop comet that was waiting for them and in order to board the spacecraft they had to die here on earth so it became very clear to them they were dealing with a cult but like that's where i would raise my hand and i'd say okay well once we shed our meat suits how do we then get to the ufo it does not make sense to just go to the ufo first and then shed our meat suit there well i think it was like the idea of like your soul would then transcend and get taken up well how do you direct it to the ufo and not to heaven or hell or anywhere else in the world this is why you would not be in a cult because you ask too many questions i'd read that then i become the leader i'm like guys i rewrote this i think it makes a little more sense now yes you are much more likely to be a leader and i'm much more likely to be a member you happy halloween crime house listeners i'm vanessa richardson join me every sunday this month on crime house 24 7 for crime house of horrors where i dive into four stories behind some of our favorite scary movies if you can't wait and want all four episodes now ad free join crime house plus join on apple podcasts spotify or at crimehouseplus.com 39 people willingly died by suicide for what sounds like bizarre ideology to us but again like you really have to be in something to understand it yeah and as you can imagine days after the discovery the story spread fast 39 people a mass suicide a ufo most headlines would read things like bizarre ufo cults and things that are really catchy which led to two different public reactions one was fear because this was after waco and the satanic panic and people were terrified of mind control and cults and that sort of thing and then the other kind of this is so unfortunate like they turned it into a punch line it was like a big joke because it sounds so bizarre and you're like how does it sound fake right it's like because the ufo and aliens are involved i think it became more of like a ha ha thing even though 39 people lost their lives but for example snl at the time aired a sketch with nike's slogan just do it and superimposed over photos of the victim's bodies like actual photos yeah yeah and the morbid fascination didn't stop there people clamored to own a pair of 93 decade nikes and nikes actually pulled the model from production almost immediately but that only fueled more demand and ironically marshall picked out the decades solely because they were cheap and he bought all 39 pairs for under 400 dollars and he bought all 39 pairs for under 400 dollars and he bought all 39 pairs for under 400 dollars and he bought all 39 pairs for under 400 dollars but now this type of nike shoe sells for well over five thousand dollars just one pair one pair five thousand dollars cult members wore them died in these shoes yeah yeah so both reactions from the public came from a place of misunderstanding because no these people were not crazy they were people with lives and families and careers people who were looking for something they were looking for a purpose they were looking for meaning which brings us to well how did these people who could be you or me or you like how did they get to the point where they were able to do this and that brings us to one man marshall applewhite if you have heard of heaven's gate you likely do know the name marshall applewhite because he is known as the cult leader i debate that he for sure was second in command for a while but then ultimately in the end he was the leader but in order to understand how heaven's gate came to be and how they got to their final moments let's go back to the beginning because i think like marshall applewhite's background actually informs so much of this marshall applewhite was born on may 17th 1931 in a small city called spur in texas and he was born into a very conservative presbyterian family he was the son of a minister and like church was not something that his family went to and attended and did it was who they were his father was a minister or a preacher his mother was the director of the choir and his life was very very structured there was discipline there was a clear line between right and wrong and marshall was very much expected to follow in the footsteps of his father and to follow those rules that they had laid out for him and for a while he did he was intelligent well-liked and studious step one was to graduate high school he did so in 1948 step two attend college marshall enrolled at austin college philosophy 1952 marshall graduated with his bachelor's degree his next step was get married he met and married a woman named ann frances pierce and continuing along this path he and ann started a family and had two children together everything was on track for marshall to keep this quiet uneventful life that he had been like destined for according to his parents he even signed up for seminary school in north carolina to follow in his father's footsteps as a minister but here's the thing while he felt this pressure and felt like he needed to conform to his parents expectations he had to then give up a lot of what he really wanted and who he really was he had to hide his identity his sexuality his sense of self and his true passion which was for music yeah if only he could have been introduced to the world of drag i feel like that would have really done a lot for him his parents never would have let him that's the thing i know yeah move away leave do something so yeah music was his real passion but he didn't want to disappoint his parents so he stayed to the path but ultimately after just a couple semesters of seminary school marshall dropped out to become a music director of the presbyterian church in charlotte and it seemed like marshall was a lot happier with this situation right because he was doing at least some of his passion right it was like a bit of please the parents but also something for him yeah but then he was drafted into the army in 1954 and he eventually became a sergeant and was honorably discharged in 1956 him becoming a sergeant is already like proof of leadership skills too right there's not like huge leaps in what we're going to come to so once he was out of the for music more seriously and he went back to school and earned his master's degree in music which you're like yes go marshall like you're doing it you're doing something for yourself he dreams he's going to chase them we support that after getting his master's marshall moved his family to new york because his dream was to be a broadway star like it really does seem like going to the army actually maybe helped him a little bit yeah to create some distance and maybe like pursue things for yourself right and i think there's a lot of people who were in the army that were also having to hide exactly who they were too yes so he wanted to be a broadway star but we know the reputation of broadway there aren't that many spots there's a lot of talented people out there it's not that easy to make it so he needed to support his family he needed to support himself so he had to have a steady income yeah so marshall turned back to academics and landed a job as a music professor at the university of alabama and it is here that marshall's life takes a massive turn because in 1965 marshall applewhite was a fired for having a sexual relationship with a student a male graduate student and immediately his wife ann left him yeah and this was just so catastrophic for marshall every part of his life is collapsing in this moment his job his marriage his sense of self i'm sure there's a lot of fear about like his reputation and how people who loved him would see him right and we have to remember that this is happening deep south in the early 60s and marshall had grown up in this very very religious family and while we can like now today be like okay marshall you were gay and like you had feelings for men that was not accepted and not something that he could ever really identify with because it was so ingrained in him that that was wrong and not accepted so marshall tried to keep his family together he tried to like shove that part of himself down but that caused him to spiral and it only got worse when ann did divorce him and was granted full custody of their kids in 1968 so she left him took the kids marshall moved to houston and he tried to focus on his career and his passion for musical theater he got a job as the chair of a music department at the university of st thomas and he threw himself into the local theater scene but tragedy struck again when his dad died in 1971 and as you can imagine with what we've told you about his upbringing marshall's mental state got even more erratic after this yeah he was trying to live life as someone who he thought his father wanted him to be while truly suffocating and bearing down his true self and it's after his father's death that people really started to see this sort of like shift in marshall his theater friends noticed that he was extremely anxious and paranoid now and he used to be very articulate a very even-tempered guy patsy swayze who's i love the mom the mother of patrick swayze why can't i you know who i'm talking about she actually knew marshall from the houston theater scene yeah they were in this same theater group how wild is that like it's always interesting when there's like little celebrities popping up when she heard some gossip that marshall was talking people's ears off about ufos she got really freaked out especially because this was so out of character for him so it was like his dad's death kind of marked like something snapped something broke in him yeah yeah something shifted in him after his father's death and we always say this we're not professionals we're not psychologists we can't diagnose someone but i really do feel like there probably is something diagnosable here but even just looking at everything that's happening all at once loss of job divorce loss of his family his father dies all while he's struggling with his sense of self and sexuality you understand why someone would have a mental breakdown immense stress yeah or just trigger like an underlying mental illness yeah illness so in the spring of 1972 marshall applewhite had a mental breakdown and he admitted himself into a houston hospital and this is only part of the story so he like admits himself to the hospital for this anxiety but he also is going there to be cured of his homosexuality because he thought he was sick yeah because that was something that had been like preached to him that makes me so sad so yeah he was going to this hospital hoping to be cured which we know this is something that does not get cured it is not a illness at all so it's here in this hospital in 1973 that the course of marshall's life will be forever altered all because of one woman like i said marshall really isn't the leader a 44 year old nurse named bonnie lou truesdale nettles bonnie offers marshall a psychic reading to his future already a little strange thing for a nurse to do for their patient but she tells marshall that he has been chosen by god for an important mission which in one sense i totally get it like you have a patient who's in the worst place in their life and you're telling them the sentiment of like you have a purpose you're important like you are needed here but she takes it to a whole other level and tells marshall that his purpose is to lead humanity to the kingdom of heaven and she goes even further to tell marshall that he has been chosen to start a new religion which like if she had told him that seven years ago this wouldn't have ever happened but it was like he was chosen to start a new religion the perfect timing i guess but like what's the worst timing and the most susceptible moments for him she gave marshall a purpose one that would ultimately lead to a horrific mass suicide but in the moment it is a purpose that marshall needed to persevere and finally give like meaning to his pain and with that bonnie became his spiritual master their relationship and dynamic is really something else and we will get into it in a second but first let us talk about bonnie because clearly she's got a lot to offer in this story too she's got a story bonnie lou nettles was born on august 27th 1927 in a small town in texas and similar to marshall she grew up raised in a very strict christian household i feel like that can be applied to a lot of people growing up in this time in texas yeah but as a young adult bonnie was also active in houston's theosophical society which blended mysticism astrology and a cult which i'm like which sign me up yeah right look not to say that that's like in an indication that someone's gonna start a cult no i feel like that sounds really interesting yeah she was even a member of a spiritual group that claimed to be able to hear messages from space aliens and dead spirits honestly sounds like half of our friend group yeah like there is a lot that i know i can see us relating to here but that's all to say that some people might classify her beliefs as unusual with her background in both religion and religion and she's also a member of a group that claims to be able to hear and a cult bonnie was able to convince him that she could predict his future and see into his past well and also keep in mind like his theater group when they noted him acting weird he starts talking about ufos and all this stuff so when he meets bonnie who is talking about the same things it's this perfect storm like you're saying of like oh my god i was meant to find you yeah and like let's take his theater background he's a yes and he's kind of guy he's it's been taught to him so he he definitely hears her out she says she can predict his future and see into his past and in fact she convinced him that they had known each other in a past life which is also a little bit of like love bombing yeah right and it's like in this moment where he needs direction and he needs someone to almost like please and take the role that his dad once had a hundred percent like this is the perfect person to come into his life makes me sad i know i'm upset for him yeah but he can't he probably viewed it as very serendipitous like we're meant to be together yeah by this point marshall viewed bonnie as much more than a nurse and even more than his spiritual guide he was pretty convinced that they were actually platonic soulmates platonic or not the revelation was super concerning for bonnie's family specifically her husband because yes she was married bonnie was married at the time and her husband was like nope i'm not having all this this is weird yeah so he actually quickly filed for divorce and won full custody of their four children and while a lot of people could be very devastated by this bonnie was actually elated yeah because she saw this as god's way of freeing her from her family so she could focus on her true calling working with marshall to spread their message so clearly there's a lot going on with bonnie and like i'm sure there's probably a lot more about her background that informs this but again it's like this perfect storm because and we don't know was bonnie doing stuff like this to her other patients or was it truly like the combination of these two people together yeah that created the perfect storm which totally can there's so many like duos who yeah kill together you know where like they just kind of would never have done it with someone else but yeah yeah also her just being a nurse it does make me wonder like if there was something either drug wise that she got into or if there was something like personality wise you know like when you're around certain people enough and you you start to absorb and take on their personalities like yeah i don't know if this is just truly coming from within her or if there's some sort of culmination of of things probably some type of culmination yeah but yeah from that point on bonnie and marshall became inseparable because now bonnie's whole family has left her yeah marshall's ex-wife and kids have been taken away from him his father is the reason why all of their family and children have left them because they're left to have this purpose yep it's just the two of them and that is the priority over everything and up until this point marshall had been living a double life always hiding his true self in order to be accepted by his family and they rejected him when inklings of his true self came out but now here's this woman bonnie who accepts him for all that he is and validates everything that he's been through and everything that he believes maybe despite it being a little bit out there so it makes him believe that he doesn't need anything or anyone else marshall begins to distance himself from his old life he cuts contacts with friends colleagues and after bonnie had like proclaimed this like happiness and like meaning behind having to cut off contact with her family she tells marshall he has to do the same so sometime after meeting bonnie around we don't know the specific date but around 1973 ish marshall applewhite traveled to dallas where his sister lived and he knocked on her door and he told her something that she will never forget he tells her that she will never see him again and then he left oh my god like it's so concerning this almost like brings me back to when we did the crimes of passion season and it's all the red red flags coming up in relationships and like my god there are so many red flags between bonnie and marshall here and just like trying to picture what their family members were were experiencing how concerning it was and we don't even know the full extent of it because they're both deceased yep but we do know that before long marshall had cut ties with literally everyone in his life except for bonnie then bonnie quit her nursing job and the two of them donated all of their belongings gave away all of their extra money and set off on a road trip to find their higher purpose and it did not take them long to find that higher purpose while camping near gold beach oregon they had an epiphany they realized that they weren't just two wayward drifters they were part of the bible right there in revelation 11 as some context revelation 11 talks about two prophets who are sent to earth with a message and they spend years preaching their message to the world before being rejected and then killed but then they are resurrected and taken up into heaven on a cloud so like already you see that messaging really really mirrored right in the heaven's gate right and so when i raise my hand and say well why do we have to leave our meat suits now they can just reference this and be like well because in the bible behind here and then you get yeah risen up to your cloud ufo yep maybe i would have been a member i don't know they have answers to some of the questions they do so bonnie and marshall they were sure that they were these two prophets and they said that they had been sent to earth to share this message and that everything in their lives had basically led to this moment yeah it's from here on really that their belief system begins to evolve and they start to blend it with some other like less traditional ideas it might be misspeaking because we didn't write this down but i'm pretty sure like bonnie And Marshall believed that the way they knew each other in a past life was like in an alien form. So like they do believe that they're not from Earth, that they were sent to Earth, which again is, gosh, messaging in Revelation. It's so interesting, too, because it's like, I mean, you've said it before that like we're not professionals when it comes to psychology, but we do obviously like know patterns and things. Other people have discovered that work in the field and psychosis. There's so many examples of psychosis relating to aliens and UFO abductions and religion. And it's like, here are the two of them are together. Yes. Building on like both of that, like combining that like a shared together illusion. Totally. Yeah. Well, it kind of started in this more like religious sense. And specifically, they did believe in some of it in terms of like their roles and how it showed up in the Bible. And the cloud that's described in Revelation is not actually a cloud. It's not heaven. It's not this space in between. It's a spacecraft. It's a UFO. You go to a UFO. And for that matter, they said that the concept of God himself was also up for interpretation. They claimed he wasn't a deity, but actually an all powerful space alien. I buy into that a little bit. Yeah. Like, I mean, like, who do what do we know? Who's to say? Yeah. What do we know? What do we know? So they say that he was calling them, the two of them, to join him. And they start to proclaim that the UFO was waiting to take them to the next level. And this is what they started referring to as the demonstration. But entry to the next level would come at a steep cost. So to qualify, humans would have to shed all of their earthly attachments, which they kind of already did. Their friends, their family, all their relationships, their careers, their possessions, their money, romantic, sexual relationships as well. Things that they'd already done. So look, they're already leveling up. Well, and this is like early days of their forming their ideology. Keep in mind, there is no messaging of having to shed your vehicle at this point. And right now it's just the two of them. Like they're not spreading this to other people yet. And it's like one of those things where it's like even when they do start to spread it, it's the whole thing is relating back to revelations. Unless they outwardly. Don't tell people that it's from revelations. I'd be like, oh, well, the two, them two are going to die and go. They actually call themselves the two. The two. Like we're just supporting these two. Totally. Did you know the most feared pirate in the Atlantic, the man who terrorized an entire ocean for years, may never have actually killed anyone? Or that the real golden age of pirates was the most democratic workplace in the Western world? I'm Conor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum, and history is my thing. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Every week we take the most unbelievable true things in history and tell you the whole story behind them. Carter sets the scene. Conor brings the facts, the deep cuts, and the genuine belief that this is the most interesting subject in the world. It is. This is the history lesson you actually wished you had in high school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact. What the Fact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod. And despite what you might be thinking of like how outlandish some of this is, Bonnie and Marshall fully believed in their ideology. And then as they're like forming this and putting it together and feeling like they're having these massive epiphanies, they're like we need to share it with other people and help bring them to. To. The demonstration and to like to God. How many seats are on the spacecraft though? I don't know. So they start small. They first start recruiting with like an old friend from Texas. Then they passed out pamphlets in churches and spiritual workshops under the name The Two, as in The Two Witnesses in Revelation 11. And at first, no one really takes them seriously. Bonnie and Marshall come off as more delusional than anything else. And then things got a little bad in August of 1974. When Marshall. When Marshall led Texas state troopers on a high-speed chase in a stolen rental car. Again, feels like a movie. And in court, Marshall claimed that a force from beyond Earth compelled him to keep the car. I'm sure you can understand that the judge did not buy this. Yeah. And he threw Marshall in jail for six months. But jail actually proved to be the perfect place for Marshall to like do some thinking and refine the message to better relay it to recruits. He spelled out their beliefs on a flyer and rebranded the movement as Human Individual Metamorphosis, or HIM for short. A reference to shedding their humanity like a caterpillar sheds its chrysalis. And in March of 1975, one of those flyers reached a group of spiritual seekers in Los Angeles. And now the recruiting starts to work. And almost immediately, everyone is very captivated by Marshall. He's described as completely magnetic. One convert claimed that he had an out-of-body experience the second Marshall touched him. Prospective members would fill out questionnaires, which include a particularly pointed question. Can you follow instructions without adding your own interpretation? Which reminds me so much of, and I've never been asked by a Scientologist, but it reminds me, because when we lived in L.A., I remember people being like, oh, I was at the Ralphs, which is like right across from the Scientology building. And I was like, oh, I was at the Ralphs, which is like right across from the Scientology building. And there would be people waiting at the end of the line to, like, ask you random questions. But they were all kind of the same idea of, like, are you going to question my weird questions or not? Because if you're not going to question it, then I might bring you over to the church. Wait, which Ralphs? Why didn't I ever get recruited? Because we didn't live near it. Oh. Oh. I thought you meant, like, nearby us. No, not near us. I am truly insulted that in my seven years in L.A., no one ever tried. No, I think it was the, it's the Ralphs by, like, the Hollywood Hills. Oh, wait, I went to that Ralphs. I used to live right there. And you never got recruited? I'm going to study a drive. What the hell? They took one look at you, and despite your outfit being very culty right now, they knew that you were not impressionable. No, I was really good at doing dead eyes in L.A. because I didn't want people to talk to me in public. Well, it worked. But so in doing this and, like, with these questions, again, like, I don't think they were intentionally setting out to start a cult. They were kind of scanning for the most vulnerable. And impressionable people, people who wouldn't ask questions, it wouldn't challenge their authority. And it worked. Because that single L.A. meeting grew their tiny little threesome, because it was just them and their friend from Texas, now into 30 people. And the recruits came from all walks of life. There was a retired grandmother, a former model, a police Air Force pilot trainee, a wayward teenager, a television producer, and a CPA all joined the group. So L.A. Yeah. Such an L.A. group. Right. Of course, they would find success as soon as they hit the L.A. demographic, I feel. Unfortunately, not to stereotype, but I feel like a lot of cults start forming in Los Angeles. Opportunity. Opportunity. Great. I finally found my theater troupe. So most came from normal backgrounds. One example was Joyce Scala, a journalism grad, a mother of twins, and a local TV personality. She gave up her entire life within 48 hours of meeting. Bonnie and Marshall. Damn. What are they saying to these people? Like, that's what I want to know. Like, what is, how is the messaging so convincing that you were leaving your. Everything. Everything. Your children. Like, that's what I can't understand, too. And, like, there actually were a few single parents who even gave up custody of their children to the state to be able to join the two. So sad. Bonnie and Marshall were presenting something powerful. Belonging, purpose, a shared mission. And no one thought. Not that they were joining a cult. I will say, like, as terrible as it is to give up custody of their children to the state, I'm glad they didn't bring their children. Like. Like the Jonestown massacre that would happen a year later. Exactly. Yeah. So, again, I want to point out that Bonnie and Marshall weren't these massive calculated monsters. They didn't think that they were creating a cult. They didn't set out to create a cult, which isn't the case for all cults. Like, we'll talk about NXIVM eventually in this season. And, like, or even cults like Jim Jones. Like, they are more manipulative and financially driven, whatever it is. There's creepiness to them. Yes. And secrecy. And this was not that. This was just delusion. Yeah. Bonnie and Marshall fully believed their messaging and were living according to their beliefs and the lifestyle they preached. And they truly believed they were saving lives. But the result was the same. Building a system of control that had real consequences. And now. It's not just their lives that they're controlling. It's not just the two anymore. It's about 30. Yeah. Their motley crew traveled up the West Coast, basically going wherever Bonnie and Marshall told them to go. Usually without much rhyme or reason. And it's around this time that Bonnie and Marshall came up with new nicknames for themselves. So they were no longer going to be the two. They were going to be called Bo and Peep. And they requested that people call them by their nicknames. Bo Peep. In their minds, this proved that. They were shepherds gathering up lost sheep. Over the next few months, they managed to draw in more than 200 followers. Yeah. And with their numbers growing, the group became even more. nomadic bouncing between campsites and surviving on donations and panhandling which is like literally the start of so many cults on the west coast like this is like the same throw them in some red robes and we've got like three of those yeah so as members became more and more indoctrinated they were expected to surrender their human possessions they were told to devote themselves fully to overcoming their humanity that meant no music which i'm shocked by marshall here right no music no drugs no sex no reading reading was banned as well and naturally similar to a lot of the other cults we'll talk about this season it didn't take long for families to notice that their adult children were disappearing after attending bonnie and marshall's lectures national outlets did start to cover the strange wave of 20-somethings vanishing from the same california towns and reporters would question like how we are how did seemingly stable affluent people just abandon their lives so quickly it's a good question and that question apparently didn't bother bonnie and marshall one bit because they had other things to deal with with the increase in numbers came an increase in disagreements and internal conflict some of their early members started to get tired of all the rules and to deal with those who questioned them bonnie and marshall decided to literally ditch them they would be stranded alone in sedona arizona completely cut off this was a powerful message for the remaining followers which was basically like stay in line or you will be kicked to the curb you will be left in the desert and you won't be able to like graduate yeah to the next level forget the ufo you're out of here yeah but bonnie and marshall were a little bit in over their heads still the group grew quicker and they really couldn't keep up with it and then winter set in and the reality of cold campsites and constantly begging for like literally anything everything it sort of lost its charm and even the most loyal followers started to kind of wonder if this was exactly right by the end of 1975 just eight months after the cult started more than half of its members had left but marshall and bonnie didn't mind to them this was just a part of the process and allowed them to whittle their flock down to the most devoted so this is another aspect of heaven's gate that i found really interesting and is pretty unusual when it comes to cults and it's pretty different because like most cults have very set ideology and don't adapt which in a way heaven's gate did have like a set ideology or like belief that they were going to graduate to this higher level and that god was calling to them but they were extremely adaptable like bonnie and marshall could change tactics to better serve them like in 1976 bonnie marshall and their remaining 100 followers regrouped and overhauled everything first they declared that the harvest which was like their recruiting term was done they would no longer be actively recruiting they then renamed themselves again bonnie became t and marshall became doe like the musical notes but so it's interesting because t was bonnie's nickname and doe was marshall's nickname t always came before doe bow came before peep as if insinuating like bonnie was the one in charge mm-hmm which is interesting like even though marshall nowadays is deemed a leader which we'll get to why it's also interesting too just like them saying that they were done recruiting i feel like almost works in their favor to instill more fear in the members that they currently have because it's like you don't get to come back in if you leave like that's it you're out like this is the group yeah and they can say like this is god's call like this is what god is saying yeah next came what they called the classroom phase and they traded in old campsites for a nice suburban house where they launched into a strict training program to prepare their students for graduation to cover expenses some members were allowed to work service jobs or fix up computers for cash but there were strict rules with that they were told to keep their co-workers at arm's length and claim that they were part of a monastery if anyone asked too many questions interesting they sure didn't look a part of a monastery no uh the rules were maybe the most important part of being a member of heaven's gate and the rules went far beyond their jobs there were rules about how to butter your bread rules about how to use the restroom rules about how you could sleep which by the way was on your back to avoid impure thoughts that might come from sleeping on your stomach which so many of these things like i feel like are marshall's internal battles too yeah like did he relate sleeping on his stomach with like an impure dream or something or not to be crude but like he had a relationship with a man perhaps he was spending time on his stomach in his relationship and that's why this is not something that he wants to right he's he's trying to reject members were also forced to wear identical gender neutral clothing jewelry and facial hair were banned and everyone had the exact same buzz cut on top of giving up their wardrobes they also had to give up their names so instead they were given strange new names which were basically like a mix of six letters three random consonants followed by od so for example the two men featured in the earth exit statements that were later found by police went by qst od like custody and srr od like sir od interesting yeah but it also like makes me think of because computers become really like a big part of heaven's gate like it does kind of feel like a coding yeah like a coding name yeah one one zero zero zero one one zero zero yeah then there were also daily schedules which were mapped out down to the second one former member shared their schedule which included a rest period from 3 36 p.m to 5 36 p.m using the bath chamber precisely at 557 and taking 32 vitamins at 6 21 this is like my alarms on my phone when you like scroll through because they're just so random you're like i just need like 17 of them for different things it also is so interesting because it's like they were really adaptable and now that it's it's a sharp right into like but it's like they adapted to something really strict yeah yeah and it's as a group because like you were saying like a lot of other cults are very strict from the get-go and i feel like any sort of like adaptable language and behavior is oftentimes associated with like one-on-one relationships between the cult leaders and an individual that they're trying to abuse yes but this is just like a blanket thing for everyone involved yeah at every step in the schedule members were paired with a partner and they were told to watch each other for any time lapses in behavior another strict requirement was called a central members had to check into a central location every 11 minutes and ask how they could better serve the next level every 11 minutes oh my god i didn't know the crap out of myself to keep everyone in line marshall and bonnie introduced group criticism sessions where even something as harmless as doodling or hugging would earn a punishment so now you're seeing like this phase is where it starts to turn really dangerous like yes it was there were red flags galore before but it's it's getting dangerous yeah it is interesting too because i feel like some of the cults that came before were a little bit more like lovey commune vibes and this is structure very structured very sterile but you can see how like slowly you're pushing the boundaries of these people you're stripping away their names their identity then you're seeing how far even if it's not calculated yeah you're seeing how far you can push them and how far they're willing to go for you i do wonder i mean i know that we keep saying bonnie seems like she's the one in charge but i keep thinking about marshall's time in the military and his time in jail and how some of these things i feel like could align with different tactics that are used to control them and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good kind of like break a person i do think we know more about marshall too because he is seen as a leader like i do feel like there's a lot of like question marks about bonnie yeah that we don't know true true so basically in other words this is all to say that marshall and bonnie had complete control over every aspect of their followers lives and basically the point of this was simple it was just to keep members so busy and so controlled that they had no space to dwell on the past or in the future so it's like don't think about where you are just stay and be i just feel like having recently gone through a breakup like having structure or being really busy actually helps so much to like kind of move past it and not dwell on it and think about it so i can see how someone not me but someone who's like in a vulnerable state in their life who does need that structure actually sees this as like a really helpful right thing right whether they're running from something and running from facing something or it's literally as like a therapeutic tool to just let yourself get far enough away from something that it doesn't yeah affect them as much anymore yeah so yeah their followers basically became completely dependent on their cult leaders marshall and bonnie and their approval and this was all by design and this way if someone stepped out of line marshall and bonnie didn't even need to physically punish them all they had to do was leave the compound for a few days and when they returned, Members would reportedly cry with relief and just be so distraught from having been away from them. And to them, approval from Bonnie and Marshall, T and O, it was just like as important as oxygen. Like this was their lifeline. This was everything to them. Such a toxic, toxic relationship. But the intensity was, there were some people that were like, this is a little too much, right? And again, this is what Bonnie and Marshall expected. They're all about weeding people out. And sometimes they even helped members who wanted to leave. When Dick Jocelyn, the Air Force trainee who joined the group when he was just 18 years old, finally decided that he had enough after 15 years with the group. 15 years. They actually paid for his trip back to Florida. Wow. It's one of those things where it's like, in the beginning, I feel like it was a lot of delusion. But like, is it still delusion? Because this feels manipulative. This is like, oh, we still love everyone and support everyone. If this isn't for you, then we'll help you leave. You're not trapped here. But it's also better for them to make those people leave. Because. Because you don't want other people to start questioning it with that person. Right. Right. And I feel like if you're in it, like, it is an abusive relationship where you're like, I don't know if this is good or bad. Like, some of this stuff that's happening. Yeah. In the early 80s, they singled out 19 followers to be separated and sent to Arizona. Bonnie and Marshall checked in occasionally before eventually ghosting this group altogether. So this is very calculated, right? They see these 19 people as, like, either the weakest links or eventually going to be trouble. Some. Yep. So, like, hey, you have a mission here in Arizona. And then they just really. They just did jump. Yeah. So, yeah, this group is literally abandoned, which must have been so confusing and devastating for them. But Marshall and Bonnie had no pity for them. Their focus was on the remaining followers. And that remaining number was 48 at this time. So they've, like, really fluctuated. They've gone up and down a lot. By 1982, the rules actually started to loosen a little. So that's also unlike most cults. Like, usually, like, you get stricter and stricter as you go. But then all of a sudden, they're loosening the rules. Some trusted members were even allowed to call home. And by 1985, some could even visit family members for a day or two. But this, in a way, does. Because you're saying some. It's like singling people out and they get special permission. Yes. And that is something that. It was very similar to cults. Yeah. They told all the members who were given these special permissions. Treatments. To tell their families that they had joined a monastery to study computers. Because. That's what you do at a monastery. Don't you know? It's a very odd cover story. Didn't the nuns teach you how to type? Yeah. All of the members seemed calm. Happy. And so most people didn't push back when they returned to this classroom. The monastery to study computers. How does that make any sense? To where it's like, hey, you haven't received any communication from me. Despite me literally working with technology that would allow me to communicate with you. Every day. Yeah. It's very sad. I mean, that's a whole other thing is like being a family member of someone in a cult like is probably so difficult. And we'll talk about some of that more in other episodes this season. The cult stuff. And then it's like. Yeah. I liken it to. I mean, because I don't know anyone who's been a part of a cult, but I know plenty of people who've had really bad mental illness and drug addiction. And I have a family member who disappeared off the face of the planet and people looked for him for over a decade. So like I see. I see. Bits of what? That is like. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so well, then in 1983 came another massive, if not like the biggest turning point in the history of Heaven's Gate. Bonnie was diagnosed with end stage liver cancer and even had to have one of her eyes surgically removed because the cancer had spread to it. And then came the moment that shook everything. We all experience petty grievances in life. A bachelorette party that resulted in a. Runaway bridesmaid. A neighbor who has trained their dog to poo in your yard. An ex-friend who writes a semi autobiographical book about your friend group and then kills off your character. Maybe these aren't completely relatable, but they are all petty crimes we've investigated on our podcast. I'm Griff, your average biracial farm raised queer actor and retired model who's living and looking for love in Los Angeles. And I'm Kira. I'm an SNL writer, a movie writer, a comedian, and I'm the only person pettier than Griff. Petty Crimes is a true crime comedy podcast that exclusively investigates non-crime. Meaning real life, low stakes, petty drama that's submitted each week by our listeners and ruled on by us. Some weeks we're joined by comedian friends like Ego Wodum, Gianmarco Seresi, Chloe Fineman, Sarah Sherman, Jeremy Colhane, Carl Tartt, Lacey Mosley. But most of the time, you're just stuck with us. If you're the type that tells your boyfriend to shh so you can eavesdrop on the tea unfolding at the table next to you, you've found your people. Subscribe to Petty Crimes wherever you get your podcasts. On June 19th, 1985, Bonnie. The group's co-founder, spiritual anchor, and kind of the overarching authority died. And Marshall was left to lead the flock on his own and it devastated him. And what happened last time? Someone who was so important in crafting who he was died. Yeah. Bonnie's death destroyed Marshall. As you can imagine, Bonnie was his everything for like 20 plus years at this point. Sure, he had this group that they had cultivated together. But Bonnie was his soulmate. And he had given up all of his earthly possessions for her. And up until this point, Bonnie and Marshall preached that entry into the next level required your living body. So this now messes with their ideology. There was no resurrection, no demonstration, no UFO that came to grab Bonnie's body. So Marshall, which probably this was like a mix of delusion and also probably having to keep the group together. He adapted the ideology. And tells the group that Bonnie had been forced out of her body because her vehicle couldn't contain her spiritual energy anymore. He said that she had actually reached the height of enlightenment and the alien overlords brought her home to the next level early. So this is when he starts to preach that you don't need your body to reach the next level. And because Bonnie didn't need it, neither do they. And now Marshall starts speaking about the human body. As a vehicle, a temporary shell, or a container that they could get rid of whenever they wanted to. But even Marshall wasn't sure he believed this. Because prior to Bonnie's death, he believed everything that they had preached. But now he starts spiraling. And Bonnie's death had sent him to such a depression that at one point he truly stands before this group. And confesses that he doesn't actually believe himself. And he's deceiving all of them and himself. And offers $1,000 to anyone who wants to leave. Yeah. That, you would think, would maybe be the end. You would think. But guess what? Instead of people taking the money and leaving, this speech basically had the opposite effect in almost every single member's state. Yeah. That just shows how, like, devoted they were to him. Right. And also I can see it from the perspective of being like, oh my gosh, like, this is him admitting. That he isn't making everything up. And, like, this is out of his control. And now he's starting to be nervous. And we all need to stay on the path together. He's one of us. It's not him and us. Right. Like, you can go that direction, too. So, yeah. I think that's a little bit of what happened. He was so sincere. And combined with the fatherly affection that he'd started to show everyone. And how deeply loyal they were. A lot of people stayed in this sort of, like, sealed this new bond that they had with Marshall. They literally sealed a new bond. They symbolically married him. All of them. Yep. They all had a gold wedding band. And in return, they wrote commitment letters pledging their devotion to him for eternity. This reminds me so, like, they said the monastery. And now I kind of am thinking it is similar-esque. Like, they're stealing some stuff from the monastery. Well, they're stealing a lot from Bibles. Like, the nuns are, like, married to God. Yeah. And now everyone's married to Marshall. Yeah. Oddly enough, despite this increasingly intimate bond, life inside the classroom loosened in a lot of ways. So, students were allowed to attend UFO conferences, experiment with new diets. They could watch movies. They basically had some, like, small freedoms that allowed them access to the outside world, which they hadn't before. Right. Even though it was still somewhat controlled. But not to the extent where it's like, okay, well, it's 237. So, you can't do that. You can pee only right now. Or you miss your opportunity for three hours. Right. In 1987, Marshall decided that it was time to start recruiting again. And this is what they started to call the harvest. Which is such an icky word for it. I hate that. To get his word out to potential new members, he mailed out a pamphlet called The UFO 2 and Their Crew to bookstores across the country. In 1991 and again in 1992, he followed up with a video series with the same goal. But they didn't really get the reaction that he wanted. So, Marshall went even bigger. He paid a staggering $30,000 for an ad spot in USA Today. It's so wild. I keep being like, how are they getting the money? That's another question. Yeah. Probably the members have to get rid of all their financial. Another classic Marshall thing. Yeah. So, again, they're adapting. When in-person outreach failed, they pivoted to the internet. And, in fact, they were one of the first religious groups to use the power of the internet as a tool. for recruitment and propaganda. they launched their own website which was pretty sophisticated for the early 90s especially given how isolated they were it's all that work with the computers at the monastery yeah thank goodness they went to the monastery they had a very tech forward approach which actually fit in with their very sci-fi ideology the site itself was filled with hidden messages like if you scrolled over something it would give you like secret messages that gave you more in insight into the group's belief system literally feels like today when people are trying to find creative ways to promote movies and it's like solve this code in this secret videos popping up on this website and all these like hidden things and it's just to show you the new trailer to some horror movie i saw this video this morning this guy has been drawing on his ipad but he like started with a small drawing it is he said he's been doing it for like five years now oh where you can like pinch in and it is like he has built a multi version of it and it's like it's like he's been doing it for like five years now and it's like that's so it's so wild also like i pray to god that never gets deleted i'd be so panicked all the time save as so many different files despite adapting and changing their methods they didn't really have much success in recruiting and actually by the end of 1993 the class was just 26 members still a lot of people in 1994 marshall made one last recruitment push his idea was a huge cross-country tour where they would stop in 63 cities and tell as many people as they could about their beliefs they went on tour i like how he's calling it tour instead of like a mission trip or something like that like that's basically what it is yeah they managed to pick up just over a dozen new members bringing their total to 40 members now but it wasn't a big recruitment that marshall thought that they would have right so he 40 is well they only paid up 26 they went to 63 cities and only got 12 like that that's a little bit ratio is not great no it's not maybe they should have targeted the specific go back to la go back yeah hey i have an idea for you not that we're trying to give them ideas florida you are the cult leader portland word that's where i would go uh yeah so he was like oh this isn't uh exactly what i imagined and in some ways it did remind him kind of like the very first attempt that he and bonnie when they were just the two had decades before but this time he was like okay well this isn't a failure this is a prophecy to marshall the lack of new members meant the end was near and with the end nearing marshall had to ensure the group was ready for the next level and this is somewhat disturbing so although if you've listened to the crime scene you can make it through this i'm sure there was one thing getting in the way of them being ready for the next level sexual arousal and this had always been considered one of the worst sins of the group which psychologically can go i mean again not professionals but i feel like we can directly relate that to marshall's internal battle from like childhood but he insisted that the men in the group undergo castration two of the men actually flipped a coin to determine who would go first and the first few procedures were performed right there in the house without anesthesia one man was permanently injured so then the next few surgeries were carried out in back alley non-medical facilities eventually eight men including marshall himself were surgically castrated and the rest were chemically castrated did they not consider chemical castration first not until eight of them had been surgically castrated i know in 1995 marshall bought up 40 acres in the mountains outside of albuquerque and started building two large earthship homes out of stacked tires have you seen earthship no they're sick really yes they've been on some of those like travel channel issue tv they're usually in like new mexico and arizona okay these are cool but he's trying to make it out of rubber tires he's trying to make it out of rubber tires here they're like kind of self-sustaining yeah like solariums and they're yeah they're actually like like when you learn about how they operate they're like super interesting very cool his tire houses probably are a little different yeah than what i'm thinking so anyway yeah he's making these two large earthship homes out of stacked tires and the goal was to build a structure that was big enough for the whole group to fit in but inconspicuous enough to remain completely off the grid so his plans were ambitious it was going to be five bedrooms plus a bathroom area all made out of recycled tires so just a mountain of tires but as construction got underway his health started to go downhill and gradually he started handing more and more of his responsibilities off to his followers and for a while he even floated the idea of leaving the u.s entirely but after some discussion the group backed out and in their view no place on earth truly could even suit them and the beings as spiritually as advanced as they were was that a manipulative effort too to be like maybe we move out of the u.s to make everyone be like no nothing will be better than us graduating right yeah like it doesn't matter where we go our ultimate place of like purpose to go is not here on earth out of our bodies yeah gotta get to the next level it does feel like a computer game in a way i know so then it's at this point that they start using the name heaven's gate the name symbolized the threshold that they believe they were standing on the doorway between earth and the next level and for the next couple of years this group becomes so focused on how to graduate slowly but surely the conversation turned to suicide which for most people sounds like a very disturbing and shocking unimaginable possibility but for this group who had already surrendered their names surrender their schedules their sexualities and even their bodies to marshall's authority this didn't feel out of the question and after a waco texas siege that had happened in 1993 they did consider provoking a fatal shootout with police by pulling realistic looking water pistols but then they ultimately decided against it not because it was too violent but because it didn't ensure that they all died and this is also like with marshall giving some responsibilities to others this feels like it's a group 100 decision like it's not him telling everyone what to do and to drink the kool-aid it's all of them being like how can we ascend together brainstorming sessions yeah for years by early 1996 talk of suicide became almost constant within this group 17 students posted statements about their beliefs on the classic religion of suicide and their beliefs on the class website under the title last chance to evacuate earth before it's recycled in those messages they openly acknowledged that the class was planning a group death but never used the word suicide instead they called it a willful exit of the body to them the real suicide was choosing to remain on earth one member wrote everything of this world has been offered to us and i can honestly say thanks but no i'm not going to do it again i'm not going to do it again i'm not going to do it no thanks marshall's video had a similar message saying we do in all honesty hate this world which is so interesting because it's like in their exit tapes they're like i've never been happier this is amazing and if you didn't understand the context of like what came before you would think that they were just like happy in life but they're happy in that moment to die thinking that they get to exit the world that they hate so much yeah so you would think that someone would see this and many postings and be concerned right because they're posting it online for anyone to find but the thing was basically no one was listening well because it's the early 90s this is not like today where everyone is scrolling and you see a message like that and it's concerning right there's no algorithm to direct you to something that you might find more interesting right people were saying it yeah and so the group continued to just plot their willful exit of the body in november of 1996 the group sold all of their belongings in an estate sale and they used the money to buy a huge three-story seven-bedroom mansion perched on the hills of rancho santa fe california and if you look up pictures this house is massive i think there's like even a tennis court in the backyard dang from a tire city to that i know are you sure you don't want to stay that seems pretty nice and then in 1997 an astronomical event actually determined their final days on earth the hail bop comet which again is context this was set to pass near earth in march of 1997 and when marshall heard of this he believed it was their time because beyond heaven's gate regular people were like spreading rumors that there was a ufo traveling behind the hail bop comet and when heaven's gate and marshall got word of this they were like that's the ufo for us it's coming for us so they didn't even start that rumor you know again like a to collect that hurts your heart yeah so marshall was convinced that all they had to do to join bonnie was die so the group prepared for the graduation they went to amusement parks traveled to las vegas they gambled away what was left of their savings and in january of 1997 one of the group's members rio de angelo if you'll remember him from the beginning of this episode was tasked with designing those patches they all wore on their uniforms the day that they passed away he had spent I think somewhere between like 14 to 15 years with the group he had stayed through early recruitment through bonnie's death through many phases of evolution even castration and had become one of the longest standing members and someone marshall deeply trusted i think there's different reporting some say that rio woke up and like had a bad feeling others say that like he was still very ingrained in the group and marshall approached him and was like you have a purpose and you need to stay here on earth so instead of dying with the rest of the group marshall was like you have to stay behind so that you can spread the message to others either way whether rio left or not he was given a computer a camera and a thousand dollars and money for a train ticket back to la and that moment actually saved his life rio and a couple of others left to continue spreading their mission leaving 39 members of heaven's gate in rancho santa fe and then in march of 1977 marshall told his remaining followers that the time had finally come marshall sent a package with earth exit tapes to rio's address to arrive after they had all graduated marshall wanted their bodies to be found and wanted rio to be the one to inform the world and shortly after marshall had sent the package the suicides began over the course of three days the group carried out the plan with the same eerie precision that had defined marshall and bonnie's leadership for decades by the time rio received the messages he knew that the group was already gone and he doesn't call the police right away he goes to the house to see it for himself and then he makes the call which is what led to everything we know now the investigation the headlines the shock around the world 39 people gone a mass suicide and the world tried to make sense of it but it did become the story about a czar ufo cult like something to dismiss or fear mind control cults but the reality is so much more complicated than that and people do debate on this but in in many ways they were all victims yeah bonnie victimized marshall by preying on his delusions when he was at one of his lowest points in his life and had literally been a patient in a psychiatric hospital right and then marshall in turn victimized his followers first carefully selected the people who were supposed to be only the most impressionable people forcing them into this very strict rigid schedule and then constantly preying on their fear of abandonment taking away every aspect of their individual being their clothing their name their relationships even parts of their own body and i feel like this is the reason that marshall is seen as the leader is because bonnie did die and once she died that is when the ideology and this like idea of having to die in order to graduate came to be yeah and marshall did lead them to what is ultimately this right horrific mass suicide it is interesting because like going back again to what i said before where it's like he had that declaration of like i don't know what we're doing here is this even what we're supposed to be doing like i feel like that was the moment that it could have became so much more intense because it became like a group project like he was ready to give up yeah and walk away but then they ended up bringing him back in right like it's not he and bonnie feeding on each other it's now 30 plus people being like spiraling it's so sad yeah so by the end these people were left with no identity outside of the group no real path forward except for the one that marshall laid out and that is exactly how cults thrive they rely on manipulation isolation fear and control and they tap into the human need for belonging then slowly replace personal identity with group which certainly we can see very blatantly here yep and once that process takes hold it can feel impossible to question the leader let alone actually ever leave i'm trying to look at what was the specific date that he and bonnie met what like 1972 this was happening for 30 years this didn't happen overnight it really really did take a long time bonnie and marshall believed what they were saying that doesn't cancel out control though and also being a victim doesn't cancel out being coercive and controlling either yeah they can be both they can be victims and the manipulative masterminds the uncomfortable truth is that people who died in that house weren't crazy at all they were just regular people searching for purpose for community and for some kind of meaning in a world where they really felt out of place like you're saying these messages where they're saying they hate earth like they were struggling with life and they thought that this was something bigger and better for them unfortunately what they found was an eccentric couple who promised cosmic salvation on a ufo but the fact that the group's beliefs were bizarre doesn't make their deaths any less tragic in fact it does make it like a lot more unsettling it happened slowly quietly one belief at a time until one day none of it felt extreme and tragically the fallout wasn't over yet one of the suicide victims suzanne cook was married to a follower himself after suzanne's death he fell into a deep depression and on may 7th he took his own life so sad in an attempt to feel close to his wife he mimicked her suicide conditions exactly down to the nike decades and the pocket change oh so sad because it's like he wanted to be with her yeah and then there's the story of charles humphrey charles had been one of heaven's gates computer specialists for two decades it has never quite been stated why he drew away from the cult but he always remained dedicated to marshall even from the outside so dedicated that in 1998 he too followed the same heaven's gate protocol and died by suicide the most shocking thing to me is that heaven's gate still exists today even though the 39 members died in 1997 former members continued to run the official website which is still operational today you can visit it but it does it feels very outdated it's like a very old it looks like it hasn't changed since the 90s it has like a pixelated backdrop of twinkling stars and then you can find a link to buy the physical copy of the group's book a handful of former members have also remained active online sharing their experiences and keeping the conversation about heaven's gate alive although it doesn't exist in the way that it like they're not traveling together and living the way that they had with marshall and bonnie through their stories that is how we've learned a lot about the inner workings of heaven's gate but again like we really don't know especially the last few years we don't know the details except for what has been provided on the website god i can't imagine being a part of it today with everything that happens on social media and just like you know we love a conspiracy we love a rabbit hole yes like the meteor showers are actually missiles are actually alien spacecrafts like if you're confused about what's going on in the world like i feel like you can so easily just be mind melted manipulated and think that now is the time 100 scary yes one member who still is alive is rio who we've talked about multiple times in this episode so he split ways with heaven's gate whether it was like his own reasoning or because marshall said he had another message or he had another purpose and to like spread the word he called the police he later did change his name to richard and the design skills he picked up while working on the group's website actually helped him find work as a freelance designer over time he rebuilt the relationships he had been forced to abandon when he joined the cult and as of today he is reconnected with his mother and focused on spending time with his granddaughter and before we wrap up we want to share a few resources if you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts help is available in the united states the 988 suicide and crisis 24 hours a day you can call or text 988 to reach a trained counselor there are also resources available for people trying to leave high control groups or cults and if you know someone who is a part of a group that pressures members to cut off loved ones or shows other warning signs that we discussed today visit cult recovery 101.com for more information and resources that's the story of heaven's gate yeah it is a heavy one and a confusing one very very but you see how over time people would start to believe all the things yeah and get to the point that they did we have a lot more episodes about cults coming out but thank you so much for listening we are your hosts sabrina diana roga and corinne vienne join us next tuesday for another peek inside another crimes of cults and if there are any cases that you would like us to cover let us know in the comments here at crime house we want to thank each and every one of you for your support and if you like what you heard today reach out on all social media at crime house don't forget to rate review and follow crimes of wherever you get your podcast your feedback truly makes a difference we love you the jury and uh court is uh adjourned looking for your next podcast check out what the fact it's a new show from connor tomlinson who you know from netflix's love on the spectrum alongside Carter Roy. Follow What The Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What The Fact Pod.