On This Day: 39 Dead US Cultists Found in Heaven's Gate Suicide

Heaven’s Gate members believed that behind the Hale-Bopp comet, which was then visible in the night sky, was a spacecraft waiting to take them to a “higher plane of existence.” All they needed to do was shed their earthly bodies to begin their astral journey, according to the TruTV Crime Library.

So, under the leadership of a man called Marshall Applewhite, they ate pudding or applesauce laced with toxic phenobarbital. Several days later, their bodies were discovered.

All 39 were dressed identically in long-sleeved black shirts and black sweat pants with new black-and-white Nike tennis shoes when they were found in a seven-bedroom house in the upscale community north of San Diego. Most of the bodies were covered in a purple shroud.

For a world baffled by their behavior, the cult members left no shortage of documentation about their beliefs. Investigators found exit videos explaining the cult’s mission and a Web site created to publicize its message and draw new members.

As professional Web page designers, the Heaven’s Gate members “used the Internet to attempt to win converts and spread their message,” reported CNN in March 1998, one year after the suicides. “That ease of access to information led to (public) fears that the new medium offered new opportunities for cults to recruit, and that the sci-fi pastiche of Heaven's Gate was a perfect fit."

Still, the cultists bizarre deaths left many asking why.

“Well, the first thing to say is they're not dead. They achieved eternal life. That's the way they saw it. They were achieving a higher state. They were transcending the human condition,” said psychiatrist Dr. Jay Lifton in a Newshour interview with Jim Lehrer on March 27, 1997.

Applewhite himself addressed the cult’s mission in an exit video filmed shortly before the mass suicide.

“We came from distant space and even what some might call somewhat of another dimension and we’re about to return from whence we came,” he said.

The San Diego Union-Tribune also revisited the episode on its ten year reunion. “They were all in their running suits with their 'Heaven's Gate Away Team' patch on the sleeve. There was a computer flashing 'Red Alert,' sort of like 'Star Trek.' There was still a load of laundry in the machine. It was surreal,” said Robert Brunk, one of the sheriff's deputies to report to the scene of the suicides.

Selling real estate where serious, well-known crimes have been committed or people have died is extremely difficult for real estate agents, USA Today reported in 2006. The seven-bedroom house rented by the Heaven’s Gate members, where they committed suicide, was eventually demolished. The street name was changed as well, from Colina Norte to Paseo Victoria.

An audio clip from NPR recalls the Jonestown tragedy. Reverend Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple cult, established a community in Guyana called Jonestown to create a communist “utopia,” with Jones as the “incarnation of Christ.” In 1978, after U.S. Representative Leo Ryan of California was killed on his investigation of the town, a mass suicide ensued in which over 900 people died from drinking cyanide.

On Feb. 28, 1993, federal agents tried to arrest David Koresh at his Waco, Texas, compound. A gunfight ensued, killing 10 and beginning a 51-day standoff. Koresh headed the Branch Davidians, an apocalyptic sect of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The standoff ended April 19 when vehicles with spray booms pumped teargas into the building, and agents fired pyrotechnic teargas rounds at a nearby tornado shelter. Gunshots broke out and a fire started, engulfing the building. Seventy-five people, including Koresh and 21 children, died.

The nonprofit Rick A. Ross Institute (RRI) of New Jersey tracks controversial religious movements and maintains a research archive Web site. The institute has an advisory board that includes legal and academic professionals, and says its mission is to “study cults, controversial groups and movements and to provide a broad range of information and services easily accessible to the public.” 

ABC News provides an online photo album with information on “Killer Cults,” including The Family, led by convicted killer Charles Manson, who convinced followers that he was Jesus Christ.