THE RANCHO SANTA FE INSANITY

3/26/1997 - Believing with their deaths that their souls will be transported to a UFO secretly flying behind the comet Hale-Bopp and then taken to a new level of existence "above human," thirty-nine members of Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate cult, including Applewhite himself, commit suicide in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe. 

Not Playing With A Full Deck!

Marshall Herff Applewhite Jr. is born to Marshall Herff Applewhite Sr. and his wife Louise Haecker Winfield in Spur, Texas, on May 17, 1931.  Joining two sisters and a brother, Applewhite Jr. grows up in the religious atmosphere of his Presbyterian minister father and his piano playing, choir leader mother.  A smart kid with a good personality, in 1948, Applewhite graduates from Corpus Christi High School (other notable alumni includes WBO super bantamweight boxing champion, Jesse Benavides, actor Dabney Coleman, actress Eva Longoria, and Password TV host Allen Ludden) before attending Austin College (the school's campus is located 60 miles north of Dallas).  Active in several student organizations, in 1952, Applewhite graduates with a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy.  Degree in hand, he then enrolls at the Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia with hopes of following in his father's footsteps by becoming a minister (around this time he also meets and eventually marries Anne Pearce ... the couple will have two children, Mark and Lane).  Earlier in his studies however, Applewhite discovers he doesn't want to work as a minister the rest of his life and decides to pursue a career instead in music (a delight he has always loved, Applewhite has a fine baritone voice and loves spirituals and the works of legendary German composer George Frideric Handel).  Moving to Gastonia, North Carolina (a medium size town of over 50,000 citizens located near the city of Charlotte), he becomes the director of music for the town's First Presbyterian Church until he is drafted into the United States Army in 1954.  Serving two years (upon leaving the service as a sergeant, Applewhite will receive an honorable discharge), Applewhite spends time as a member of the Army Signal Corps in Salzburg, Austria (the beautiful mountain city made famous by the von Trapp family and "The Sound of Music") and in White Sands, New Mexico.  Out of the service in 1956, Applewhite enrolls at the University of Colorado, where he focuses on musical theater while earning a master's degree in music.

Young Applewhite

The Ministry Or Music?

    Beginning with his move to New York City after finishing his studies at Colorado, in an attempt to find a career as a professional singer, Applewhite spends the next twenty years of his life trying to discover his place in the world.  After New York, he teaches at the University of Alabama (but loses the job after pursuing a relationship with one of his male students ... he also eventually loses his wife over the affair and the two divorce in 1968), and then becomes the chairman of the music department of the University of St. Thomas (located in Houston, Texas).  Also while in Houston, Applewhite becomes a popular local singer, serves as the the choral director at the St. Marks Episcopal Church, sings in a variety of presentations (15 different roles in all) by the Houston Grand Opera, and teaches a summer school class in English literature.  In Houston, for awhile, he also openly lives as a gay man (when he tells his parents he is gay, he is rejected by his father), but grows greatly depressed when a relationship with a woman falls apart under pressure from the woman's wealthy and conservative family.  Citing depression and emotional problems, Applewhite resigns from his position with St. Thomas and moves to Taos, New Mexico in 1971, where he successfully runs a delicatessen called The Sunshine Company (his job resume for this portion of his life also includes a brief stint as an occupational therapist at a tuberculosis sanatorium outside of Boulder, Colorado).  Deeply depressed by the death of his father in 1971 and the state of his finances (he will be forced to borrow money from his family and friends), Applewhite returns to Texas and has his life turned upside-down when meets his "soul mate," a 44-year-old nurse by the name Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles.

Applewhite

Leading The Choir In Houston

Bonnie Lu Trousdale is born into a Houston, Texas, Baptist family on August 29, 1927.  Helping others her #1 priority growing up in Houston, after graduating from high school, Trousdale attends the city's Herman Hospital School of Professional Nursing, graduating as a registered nurse in 1948.  The following year, she marries local businessman, Joseph Segal Nettles, in a union that will produce four children, Teresa Ann, Robyn Ann, Rosalyn Ann, and Joseph Christopher.  For several years, everything is good in the family and Bonnie enjoys spending time with her family, her work as a nurse, and the many joys of shopping at Houston's malls.  In midlife she undergoes a spiritual crisis that leads her away from her Baptist upbringing and she begins searching for answers in the world of the occult, astrology, reading the writings of Theosophy founder, Russian mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, visiting multiple fortune tellers (she will claim that they tell her she is destined for great things and that she will soon meet a mysterious man who will help her achieve them that is tall, has light hair, and a fair complexion), consulting a deck of tarot cards, and holding regular Wednesday night seances in her darkened front room that bring forth the advice-giving shade of an 19th-century monk named Brother Francis and cadre of other spirits.  And then, in March of 1972, she meets Marshall Applewhite and the rest of either of their lives are never the same (different tales told over the years, the first meeting takes place when Applewhite visits an injured actor in the hospital where Nettles works, or, they meet when the nurse goes to visit her daughter at a local theater where she works and where Applewhite is teaching drama classes and producing weekend children's shows, or, they meet at a mental hospital when Applewhite has a nervous breakdown and Nettles is assigned to be one of the nurses dealing with his case, or, a heart condition almost kills Applewhite and one of his nurses is Nettles, or they meet walking on a Galveston, Texas beach, or, Nettles takes the shift of another nurse and meets Applewhite while she is working in a hospital nursery for premature born babies).

Nettles

However the pair meet, there is immediate chemistry between the two and by the beginning of 1973 they are living together in an intense platonic relationship in which they create what comes to be called the Heaven's Gate cult (their new religious group will also be called Human Individual Metamorphosis and Total Overcomers Anonymous).  A grab-bag of ideas gathered from the Bible, New Age beliefs and practices, and ufology, the pair come to believe that they are the two witnesses described in the Book of Revelation (they will rename themselves Bo <Applewhite> and Peep <Nettles>, before they change their names to Do <Applewhite> and Ti <Nettles>, pronounced like the Sound of Music song, and as Guinea <Applewhite> and Pig <Nettles>) and that as extraterrestrials, they have been sent to Earth and "divinely authorized" to help like-minded individuals reach a "next level" superior state of evolution and immortality, a state they can get to by doing without sex (as a sign of their devotion, Applewhite and seven other members will "voluntarily" allow themselves to be chemically castrated), alcohol, and tobacco until they are ready to shed their bodies and board a special UFO that will take them to Heaven.  Philosophy worked out between the two (Nettles is quietly the "thinker" and leader of the movement, while the charismatic Applewhite is the face of the cult and it's spokesman), they next put forth their new "religion" by opening a book store called the Christian Arts Center where along with selling a hodge-podge of exoteric books on a variety of topics, the pair teach yoga, theosophy, and pass on a pamphlet they've written about the world's coming future (in which Jesus returns to Earth as a reincarnated Texan) called "I Can't Believe That -- But You Must" (with an emphasis placed on Chapter 11: 3-13 of Revelation).  They also give talks at local churches, but are dismayed that their messages are not well received ... so they decide to leave Texas and search for acolytes elsewhere.

The Toxic Two

So the pair hit the road on a crazy zigzagging spiritual adventure in which they drive about various states and Canada hunting for recruits (one summer month they will travel more than 8,000 miles) while making visits to Oregon's Rogue River, New York, Colorado, California, Utah, Montana, Canada, and Idaho; a hegira away from their past that lasts sixteen and a half months before the couple return to Texas.  Growing even closer as they share their thoughts with each other, when broke, they sleep in a tent, dine on dinner rolls and butter, sell their blood for cash, and temporarily take any menial jobs that are available ... and they also skip out on many dinner and motel room bills.  Back in Texas, their cult gets its first disciple when their friend, real estate agent Sharon Morgan, leaves her husband and two young daughters to join Nettles and Applewhite (before leaving, she writes her husband a note, pockets $25, and gets a baby sitter for her two-year-old daughter), but not for long.  Not happy with her assignment of walking up to strangers (or that she is now called Chela, a Sanskrit word meaning "student" and asking if they'd like to meet two people that can show them how to leave Earth in a UFO or the deceit the pair show skipping out on bills (with her permission, they start using Morgan's credit cards and driving her car), and weary of the travel and feeling guilty at abandoning her girls, Morgan lasts in the cult only four weeks, eventually tearfully returning to her family.   Egged on by Morgan's husband, the pair are arrested within days for credit card fraud, with the charges eventually being dropped ... what isn't dropped though is the charge of theft filed against Applewhite for not returning a Mercury Comet he had rented from a St. Louis, Missouri car company nine months before (he will claim he was "divinely authorized" to keep the vehicle).  The stolen car gets Applewhite six months in jail.  Out and reunited with Nettles, the pair decide to set up shop in California.

Busted Prophets

Recruiting their "crew" for their otherworldly UFO journey to the next level, the couple finally experience some success in April of 1975, when after a meeting with eighty people at a home in Studio City, twenty-five individuals are induced to join the team, and after a lecture at a motel hall in Waldport, Oregon in September of the same year, twenty more souls renounce their previous lives and join up (Walter Cronkite will mention the missing individuals during an edition of the CBS Evening News).  With Applewhite suggesting he is the "Present Representative" of Christ on Earth, and that Nettles is "God the Father" the pair take their group (now roughly a hundred individuals) underground, passing on their "wisdoms" while they and their members sleep in tents and beg on streets as what is described as a "roving monastery."  In April of 1976 the group stops its recruiting efforts and gathers in the Medicine Bow National Forest of Wyoming to meet their ride to the stars, but the UFO doesn't show and the couple is forced to go into damage control mode to explain the failure to the followers that don't leave the group (a similar disappointment will take place when a predicted spaceship doesn't show up over Galveston, Texas).  The "crew" not yet ready for leaving the explanation, the members are split into smaller groups called "star clusters," which move about the campgrounds of the Rocky Mountains and Texas, and follow the directions of their two leaders ... friendships within the group are frowned upon, contact with individuals outside the group is kept to a minimum, friends, family, the media, drugs, alcohol, jewelry, and sex are all renounced, moustaches, beards and long hair are all banned, and new names, all ending in "ody" (and so, someone named Jeff, might become Jmmody), and to instill discipline, arbitrary rituals known as "games" are created by Applewhite for the group to follow.  And there are even more rules to follow to get ready when in 1979, the group receives enough money from a family inheritance one of its members is awarded, to move into rental properties in Denver and Texas.  In houses now, the windows of the homes are covered and the group begins a "boot camp" lifestyle that regiments their daily activities down to minute.  During what is called "tomb time," which can last for days, members of the group are not allowed to talk to each other, when a member needs a car, they must check-out and check-in the vehicle's keys (and the follower's driver's license), sometimes tuning forks are taped to the acolyte's heads to dispel "human" thoughts, each member is assigned a partner with which they are to eat, sleep, and work with (and recognizing the potential for trouble should the partners develop sexual feelings for each other, the partnerships are frequently changed on the whims of either Applewhite or Nettles), the preferred uniform of everyday is loose-fitting, androgynous attire topped off by a matching short haircut, and fun for the group is reduced to singing songs for their leader and watching TV shows and movies (on a 72-inch big screen television) with mystical and science-fiction themes like Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cocoon, The X-Files, and Star Trek (and of course, there is a seating chart where everybody must sit while watching the entertainment).  The group is still readying itself for imminent departure when Nettles gets cancer in 1983.  Having to have an eye removed, Nettles, believing she can't die until she and Applewhite together ascend to their next plane of existence, scoffs at her doctor when she is told to begin cancer treatments before it is too late.  A big oops for their new faith, using the alias Shelley West, Nettles dies from the disease on June 19, 1985, at the Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas (where JFK was taken after being shot in 1963).  She is 57 when she passes.

Applewhite & Nettles

After having Nettles' "vessel" cremated and her ashes secretly scattered over a Texas lake, Applewhite convinces the remainder of his followers that Nettles had achieved her earthly goals and gone up into the stars where she could help the group from the "next level" and that he is actually Jesus Christ.  That accomplished, he then organizes a ceremony in which he symbolically marries his followers.  Successful, only one member leaves the group after Nettles death and the cult is made up of roughly forty to fifty individuals.  Depressed at Nettles being gone and increasingly paranoid (stopping government raids on the group now becomes a priority and the suicide of the Jews defending Masada from Roman invaders and the Biblical Apocalypse become common topics for lectures), Applewhite adjusts his teachings into a new muddle that gives the enlightened the ability to leave their bodies for transport to the next level UFO, that movement to another existence comes every "two millennia," with the next scheduled for sometime in the 1990s, that no ascension could take place without guidance from Applewhite, and that an evil extraterrestrial called Lucifer and his brainwashed followers would try and prevent the group from leaving (from time-to-time, the group also practices a "master cleanse" diet in which for three month periods of time they only consume a mix of lemonade, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup).  The group also changes names again and now becomes "Heaven's Gate."  Developing a sense of urgency as the 90s arrive and Applewhite's health becomes frail, in 1992 thee group records a 12-part video series featuring Applewhite's belief system which it broadcasts to the world's "universal mind" via satellite.  Warning of a catastrophic disaster about to befall Earth, the group spends $30,000 to publish a full page ad in USA TODAY in 1993.  Forty acres of land purchased near  the rural town of Mountainair, New Mexico (southeast of Albuquerque), in 1995 the group begins building a base compound for themselves (it is referred to as the group's "Earth ship") out of old tires and lumber, but the work is too hard and slow, and will require even more funding (finances now come to the group by way of designing Web pages for Internet under the business name of "Higher Source"), so the cult quits, and relocates to San Diego, California.  They are in "America's Finest City," when later that year, they discover that the comet Hale-Bopp (named for it's twin independent discoverers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp) is headed Earth's way, and will be closest to the planet on March 22, 1997. 

Mountainair, New Mexico

Applewhite

Hale-Bopp

Excitement growing within the group once the discovery of the comet is announced, Applewhite hits all the correct belief buttons once Hale-Bopp can be seen both night and day by the naked eye ... the Heaven's Gate ride has finally arrived and is hiding behind the comet's coma (and per Applewhite, it contains Nettles).  Finalizing their plans for leaving, in October of 1996, the group rents for $7,000 in cash a month, a 9,200 square foot, two-story, seven bedroom, seven bathroom Mediterranean-style mansion with a swimming pool, spa, and tennis courts on a three-acre lot (within a gated community of upscale homes) from a real estate agency representing owner Sam Koutchesfahani (who has been trying to sell the home for $1,595,000).  Located on the corner of a cul-de-sac at 18341 Colina Norte (after the tragedy is discovered, to dissuade looky-loos from stopping by the street name will be changed to Paseo Victoria) in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Santa Fe, the group calls the residence "The Monastery."  At around the same time, for each of the remaining members, alien abduction insurance is purchased that pays out $1 million dollars per person for any member of the cult that is abducted, impregnated, or killed by an other-world traveler.  As March of 1997 begins, the group completes their preparations for leaving the Earth, uniforms are purchased, Applewhite tapes a video message explaining his actions he calls "Do's Final Exit, and each member records a goodbye video message for friends and family.  On a Friday night before the leavings, the group gathers at a local Marie Callender's for last meals that are all the same ... thirty-nine portions of iced tea, dinner salads with tomato vinegar dressing, entrees of turkey potpie, and cheesecake with blueberries on top for dessert.  To the staff serving the group, nothing seems amiss and they will describe the diners as all being happy and friendly.  Meal over, the group then heads back to their monastery and begin killing themselves so they can board the Hale-Bopp UFO.

Death Home

Between 3/22 and 3/26, the thirty-nine members of the cult off themselves in groupings of 15, 15, 7, and then two, using a poisonous concoction of applesauce laced with crushed phenobarbital and washed down with a shot of vodka.  Once the mixture is drunk and the individuals begin to drift off into sleep, two cultists secure plastic bags around the members' heads and asphyxiation is induced.  Gone, the remaining living members of the group then remove the plastic bags, tidy up the corpses, and place squares of purple cloth over the faces and torsos of the deceased (Applewhite is in the last group to go, and the two volunteers that commit suicide last and are found as is with plastic bags still covering their heads).  Everyone dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, wearing arm patches that read "Heaven's Gate Away Team" (a tribute to their "Star Trek" viewing), sporting brand-new black and white Nike "Decades" athletic sneakers (with the discovery of the deaths, the style will soon sell out and become a collector's item with an unworn pair currently going for $6,660 on Ebay), and carrying in their pockets a five dollar bill and three quarters, a sum that members carried while alive to negate most state vagrancy laws and to call the cult from a pay phone if help is required (the sum of $5.75 is also a match for the cost Mark Twain once said it would take to ride the tail of a comet to Heaven).  On the floor, beside each of the dead is a black traveling bag.  In all, 21 men and 18 women decide to discover their futures in death, a group made up of Applewhite (65), Missouri computer expert Cheryl Butcher (42), environmentalist David Van Sinderen (48), Connecticut commercial oysterman Alan Bowers (45), former farm girl and University of Washington graduate Margaret Bull (54), Minneapolis bus driver Alphonzo Foster (44), California computer network engineer David Moore (40), cum laude University of Massachusetts nursing graduate Julie LaMontagne (45), Utah-based "Dharma Combat" guitarist Darwin Lee Johnson (42), Berkeley, California artist Robert Arancio (45), Modesto, California computer programmer Gary Jordan St. Louis (43), divorced Oregon computer consultant Ladonna Brugato (40), Star Trek devotee Joel Peter McCormick (28), Santa Cruz clothing boutique owner Gail Maeder (27), Thomas Nichols (58), the younger brother of Star Trek Lt. Uhura actress Nichelle, Durango, Colorado real estate developer and the married father of six (ranging in ages from 8 to 18), John Craig (62), UCLA computer science master degree graduate Margaret Richter (46), Los Angeles computer company editor Susan Elizabeth Nora Paup (53), former Desert Storm decorated paratrooper Michael Barr Sandoe (25), Dallas artist Norma Jeanne Nelson (59), Sausalito houseboat dweller Suzanne Cooke (54), Des Moines medical assistant Jacqueline Leonard (72), Oregon outdoorswoman Susan Strom (44), two-child (ages 8 and 6) wife and homemaker Judith Rowland (50), postal service mail sorter and mother of newborn twins and three other children, Yvonne McCurdy-Hill (38), Boston University psychology dropout Denise J. Thurman (44), New Hampshire car salesman Lindley Ayerhart Pease (41), San Antonio masseur Jeffrey Howard Lewis (41), Canadian accountant Erika Ernst (40), Los Angeles computer trainer Lucy Eva Pesho (63), and Oklahoma television personality Joyce Skalla (58).  Madness!

Final Rant

Last Photo Of The Group

Applewhite

Headlines

On Wednesday, 3/26, at 3:15 in the afternoon, the San Diego Sheriff's Department receives an anonymous tip through their 911 system (the call comes from former Heaven's Gate member Rio DiAngelo, who has visited the house after receiving Applewhite's final video) that there are problems at a Rancho Santa Fe home.  Problems indeed, arriving at the residence shorty after 4:00, Deputy Robert Brunk finds the mansion buttoned-up except for an unlocked side door.  Entering without a warrant under "probable cause," Brunk is inside for only moments and exits to call for backup after counting ten bodies inside the home (the stench he is greeted with is overpowering, and he and another officer will go to a local hospital to be checked out after inhaling the fumes from the dead).  And soon the home is swarmed by curious citizens (who block off Rancho Santa Fe's main street, seven media helicopters and a plane that hover overhead, and dozens of individuals from law enforcement agencies that include the FBI, the San Diego Police Department, the San Diego Sheriff's Department, the San Diego Coroner's Department, firefighters, reporters, and members of the county's Hazardous Materials Team.  Later, after the home has been processed by homicide detectives and the members of the Coroner's Department, the bodies are taken to the morgue, and after autopsies, cremated (afterwards, there will be a copycat suicide of a 58-year-old man in Marysville, California not connected to Heaven's Gate, and the leaving of three more members of the group later in 1997 ... to date, two members are still maintaining the group's website on the Internet).  The search for "why" answers begins almost immediately and goes on to this day in the form of books, magazine articles, songs, movies, and television shows about the cult (in 2020, HBO Max will screen a four-part documentary miniseries called Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults and in 2021, the documentary series "Dark Side of the 90's will feature an episode devoted to the cult deaths).  

Removing The Bodies

So far, despite Applewhite and his acolytes being gone for over two decades now, no postcards have been received on Earth from any of Heaven's Gate's dead.

Away Team Member