True Crime Vault: The Cult Next Door: The Mystery and Madness of Heaven's Gate
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This is Debra Roberts. Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault.

Each week, we reach back into our archives and bring you a story we found unforgettable. He broke her teeth. He broke her bones. Poisons that you could use that would be undetectable. Oh my goodness! What have you done? Take a listen.

Four bodies. 16 bodies. 29. Grand total to 39. Okay, clear the way. What in the hell happened here? Who are these people? Members of the cult who believed there was a UFO waiting to transport them to the kingdom of heaven.

Hold your patch. Heaven's gate awaiting. Diane Sawyer reporting. Are you still the messenger? How did so many smart, idealistic young people end up ensnared in a cult? 39 to beam up. Convinced this one man could teach them to perfect themselves and get to heaven. It's the cult. I mean, it's the cult of cults.

It's the cult of truth. By trying to erase their gender, their sexuality, their private thoughts. Heaven's Gate stands out because it was so extreme. For more than two years, we've unearthed tapes hidden for decades, tracked down former followers. This is the first time that I have been asked, really, about this story. And the loved ones left behind.

This sense of betrayal. Now, trying to unravel the mystery of Heaven's Gate once and for all. Be careful who's on the other side of the door. Then I can be your shepherd. The cult next door. A sprawling mansion, the curtains drawn, a mystery inside. An old videotape begins to flicker into view. Our first glimpse of a secret world.

It is Christmas and we see a kind of family bustling with activity. In their home videos, everyone's smiling, hugging, laughing. At the stove, a girl from a well-heeled New York neighborhood. She was once a cheerleader, the whole world at her feet. "I think you do it too fast, it breaks. It's really a pain."

A young man born into a prominent Connecticut family, his future filled with opportunity and wealth. Are you filming this? No. The tall man at the door with a blazing smile, once a Colorado businessman, a former political candidate, another beautiful, quiet smile.

He is the brother of a famous actress on an iconic TV show. Hailing frequencies open, sir. She is Lieutenant Uhura from Star Trek. We should have been there ten minutes ago, sir. Look at the camera. You look great. So many people on this tape once high achievers, strivers filled with promise, now performing a giddy talent show. ♪

That's a valedictorian who was once a presidential scholar. So take a closer look at the revelers. Do you notice anything about them? Their haircuts, exactly alike. Baggy clothes, no gender. And with every move, they fix their adoring gaze on one man in the room.

They call him Doe. Marshall Herve Applewhite, Doe, is basically their god. Who is this man called Doe? And what is the source of his power over highly accomplished people from all over the country? Ohio, Missouri, Minnesota. Listen, he's directing the scene. Look at the camera. Where's your normals? There. Ah. Good. For more than 20 years, how has he convinced these followers he can lead them through the gates of heaven?

He promises they'll be carried to the next level of existence in a UFO. Does he believe what he's saying? As he asks them to record video farewells to Earth, death just hours away. Tapes that raise so many questions about the narrow divide between choice and coercion, faith and delusion. The Tinkerbell warns Peter Pan that every time someone stops believing in little people like her, a little person dies. The people in the world who have

I thought that I had completely lost my marbles. They're not right. These people who are laughing 24 or 48 hours later ingest poisonous barbiturates and kill themselves with bags tied over their heads. Sheriff's Department with a search warrant demanding entry. On top of the table, there's one body.

We're going to begin tonight with the strange suicide of the 30th... It's very strange. March 26, 1997. America reels at one of the most bizarre stories in the history of cults and religion. One on top of another.

One bed here, one bed there. Four bodies. Six bodies. Ten, twelve, sixteen bodies. Nineteen. Body after body. Twenty-three bodies. Twenty-nine. Thirty-three. On the floor, on tables. Now thirty-eight. Grand total to thirty-nine. Thirty-nine people deceased. On the stair landing, on bunk beds.

Why were they wearing homemade spaceship uniforms, brand new Nike sneakers, their pockets filled with their ID cards, lip balms, spiral notebooks? The largest mass suicide on U.S. soil in this century. Even the hardened cops at the scene are stunned. What in the hell happened here? Who are these people? Three to beam up. Energize. 39 to beam up. Thank you. She goes, 39 to beam up. You know, and that...

I think that just said it all. I felt so sorry for her. The mystery of Heaven's Gate begins. Yes, it is. It's the cult. I mean, it's the cult of cults. It's the cult of truth. For more than two years, we've been poring over the decades of old documents, videotapes, hundreds of hours of audio tape we've not heard before.

Tapes found in archives and storage bins. We set out to find former followers, including the anonymous caller. What secrets will he share 25 years later? And other witnesses start to come out of the shadows to talk with us about our central question: How did wonderful people so much like our friends, our family, end up ensnared in a cult?

A life of isolation, rituals, medieval hoods blocking their faces, some even castrating themselves to curb any sexual desire. And for every face on these videos, there are so many anguished people they left behind. Parents, children, lovers desperate to find them.

My parents were in the Heaven's Gate cult. My wife was Yvonne. What happened to my brother? Is he still living? This was the love of my life. A child abandoned by her mother and her father. Both your parents. Both. Did you have a moment where you said goodbye? I just couldn't stop crying. And then that was it. They were gone.

So now, go back again and take one more look at the followers living secretly inside the big house next door. Let us start at the very beginning. On it, a beloved song from a beloved movie. A doe, a deer, a female deer. Twisted into an anthem about serving doe their leader, even to death, will help you follow along. Who is he taking us home?

The gentleman said, "I'm from the coroner's office in San Diego." So I knew immediately why he called and that all hope was lost. This sense of betrayal and literally asking the question to myself,

Sorry, I said it in a moment. I think, what a waste. All of those 39 people, what a waste. What a waste of talent and beauty, because they were good. They had good hearts. These people were not malicious. I just wish that there was some way she could have found something worth living for here.

Coming up next, who was this leader called Doe? And how did he become the man with the haunting eyes and horrifying plan? He was very deliberate about wanting to go out with a bang, something that everybody would notice. And they did.

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Every deranged leader was something else before he was a deranged leader.

The story of "The Man Called Doe" begins with a little boy in a Texas house, a precocious child who wants to be just like his dad. Marshall Herff Applewhite was the son of a preacher, a very successful Presbyterian preacher. Father and son both named Marshall Herff Applewhite. At the age of five, the young boy walks into a meeting of church elders and says he's fired up to start preaching the Word of God too.

He was nearly always on the honor roll and president of the class. He was just a born leader. His older sister, Louise Winant. I just really felt like I had to do this so that I could let people know that he was a wonderful person at one time. You knew him in the '70s? We search for someone who might remember him then. We're recording the call. You get the old characters. I'm almost 90 and she's... -87. -Yeah.

Reverend John and Eleanor Alexander have never spoken on camera before. They sang in a choir with their good friend, Herf. A wonderful, wonderful baritone voice. Big smile all the time. He was the kind of young man that most mothers would be thrilled to death for their daughters to marry. Kevin and Teresa Cooney say he was their loving musical mentor.

Why this confusion? He had a very positive effect on all of us. We all adored him. Applewhite marries his high school girlfriend, another star student from a Christian family. He's in Colorado getting his master's when he becomes a surprisingly big star in local theater.

Take it from the 18-year-old girl who appeared with him in "Annie, Get Your Gun." Does she look familiar? It's TV star Joan Van Ark, blazing onto the 1979 hit "Notts Landing." - Okay, they're all set. - Look at you. Oh, hello. How was he on stage? - Wonderful on stage. Wonderful energy. And you knew he loved being there. I didn't see struggling with anything. I just saw isolation.

As if something were hidden behind his famously powerful voice. He even sang with the opera. A voice last heard long ago. We were told all sound of him was lost. It took us months, but we heard about an old recording in a university archive. Inside, a vinyl record untouched for decades. When it begins to turn, a stunning sound emerges. Marshall Herff Applewhite singing a solo about suffering.

With his beautiful wife and two children, he had a job as a music professor at the University of Alabama. Outwardly, he's trying to present himself as a respectable heterosexual university professor. He's married, kids, beautiful wife. When he is 33 years old, a shadow moves in.

Suddenly, his wife goes back to her parents. The children go with her. The rumors are rampant. Secretly, he's got these gay affairs going on. His old friends knew nothing of the reason he felt he had to resign. We didn't even have the word "homosexual" when we were going to school. In the '50s. It probably was there, but it just never occurred to anybody.

One, two, three, four. We sift through the hours of old audio tape out of the past and find one that has never been released before. Anit Applewhite, now the leader of a cult with his followers, remembering the moment he had to tell his formidable parents he is gay. After years of marriage, finally decided that it couldn't play a double life game, really more

naturally, my homosexual, the heterosexual. And after 13 years of marriage, drove to Texas to tell the parents. And, you know, it was like I'm gonna tell everybody, get it all over with.

My understanding is that the confrontation between Herff and his father, when he found out that his son was gay, he completely and utterly rejected him. Years later, Applewhite on that old audio tape quotes his parents' reaction. What kind of sins have I committed for the Lord to scorn me this way?

Through the years, when he mentions the word "father," even his heavenly father, his voice often breaks. His father. Father. Heavenly father. His ability to recognize his father and want to be like his father. He enters a kind of free fall. Everything was just crumbling, going downhill. He was bisexual, but he couldn't even make relationships work with the men in his life either. It was disastrous to have a relationship.

kept getting sucked into relationships. Applewhite is in New Mexico, unmoored from his brilliant future, cast away from his childhood religion, and now tormented by voices and visions in his head.

It was barely daylight on a Sunday morning. Drove the little green Fiat, that little convertible. Got out in the middle of the bridge and screamed to God and said, "You've got to give me some focus or at least give me the guts to jump off this bridge because I can't handle this. I just don't want to be here." In a different world, at a different time,

With more acceptance of being diverse, he might have been able to deal with it better. I don't know. It's an absolute perfect Greek tragedy. He is a very talented man who sings. What does he do with his singing? He seduces people into a crazy cult. He's a man full of sexual energy. What does he do? He castrates himself.

Some terrible thing must have happened in his mind and emotions that we don't understand. Makes me cry to think about it again.

Applewhite says he was just at a hospital visiting a friend, but there are other versions. Was he a patient trying to cope with voices, visions, panic attacks? One is that he went in for heart palpitations. He does say he's having these weird spiritual experiences, cracking under pressure. Some type of heart problem, near-death experience. He met this nurse who said that she was sure God brought him back for a reason.

The nurse is named Bonnie Lou Nettles. She's a married mother of four children, dabbles in astrology and UFOs. At first, she seems to be falling for the handsome, fragile young man.

But there's no chance of romance. Instead, she gives a diagnosis. It's not that you're going crazy. It's not that you're sick. It's not that you're a failure. It's that you just haven't met me yet. Here's the solution. You don't belong on this planet. And she will say those unearthly voices may be anointing him as the prophet of a new religion with a kind of heaven that glorifies him.

She changes her hair just like his and says she will be right there with him, guiding him. From that moment, my life changed. Changed very significantly. Like they had a purpose which was immortalizing each other. A self-idealization. And that is how two cracked people head out across America, gathering followers they will lead down a dark and dangerous path.

The '70s, a time of upheaval and the search for new answers. There were the Moonies, the children of God, the Hare Krishnas. People were having these amazing experiences under the influence of psychedelic drugs, becoming one with the universe. The first space flights, and the heavens seem open.

More than 12,000 reported sightings of unidentified flying objects. Here is a picture that was released. It was hovering over the house. At this moment, two self-appointed messengers from God put up handmade posters, inviting curious seekers of all kinds just to come to a meeting. If you're comfortable coming closer, we would welcome you to do so.

At a table, two unthreatening middle-aged people with matching haircuts. We can help you limit Leslie. He was deeply charismatic. You feel like he is speaking directly to you. They know they don't look like biblical prophets, so with folksy intensity they call themselves silly names like T and Do and Winnie and Pooh. There's a playfulness to it, isn't there?

I think part of that is very explicit. Is it playful or something else? I think it's playful. I think it's also intentionally disruptive. And part of that is their appeal. He knows their message about a UFO coming to pick them up sounds crazy out on the street. So insane that we should quickly be locked up. But he says, take a chance. Come with them. Live under the stars. The way to get to heaven, he says, is to become pure enough, sort of like angels. And they can teach you how to do that.

Spacecrafts could come in by the thousands, maybe come in shifts. I say it was America's UFO religion. A Christian UFO, New Age, high-tech, sci-fi religion? You said it better than I did. That's it. It's absolutely critical to understand that Heaven's Gate did not begin as a suicide group. Their explicit purpose

draw was that you did not have to die to go to heaven. We began searching in the shadows for any seekers drawn to those meetings, former followers who might remember how young they once were. I love that song. My name is Leslie Light. Just a young girl at a crossroads and a little uncertain.

But I was like a hippie in Morant County. I was struggling with what I believed and what I wanted to do. Like, do I want to give everything up or do I want to go out, you know, and find a boyfriend and have sex and get a job? Just kind of new agey.

but science fiction as well, sort of like Star Trek meets Sherwood Forest, you know. Aaron Greenberg grew up a wealthy kid on Long Island. He was back from Vietnam living in a kind of commune. I was spiritual, but I wasn't religious. My dad used to have a saying that if there's a God, he lives on Wall Street. He liked the idea of free spirits camping under the stars. What's not to like? They never said no sex, but if you're with somebody and you really...

really attracted, have sex and then get on with it. What do you say? Don't linger at the river. What a crazy adventure. Let's check it out. I felt like, well, why shouldn't I check it out? These two curious young people did check it out and decided to move on. But who were the other young people who walked in the door to check it out at the moment ordinary vulnerability leads you to surrender to someone with certainty?

A perfectionist disappointed in herself. The valedictorian Margaret Richter, that's her playing guitar. Margaret always had a sparkle as crushingly as she sang. She could twinkle. So smart, she graduated college in three years, married her high school sweetheart. The marriage cracked apart. She never failed at anything. It was really hard on her. In a lonely moment, strangers reach out. There's help for anything. They lead Margaret Richter to her death.

David Cabot Van Cenderen, the child of a privileged family. His father a CEO who also taught at Yale. The son wanted to live simply in nature. Good job. Here we go. Come on. Come on over. It's for you guys. To be with him was to be in the presence of magic. He meets strangers who also talk about living simply at a campground. He ends up giving them his trust fund and his life.

In another meeting, a 26-year-old actor, singer, model, Dick Joslin. He looks back at the moment he walked in with bruising memories from high school. I was in love with my best friend in high school, totally unobtainable. I got into college, fell in love with another straight guy, totally unobtainable. I felt tossed around so much.

It makes no difference at all, asexual or homosexual or heterosexual. I thought, well, this is a way to take control of my existence. He thinks he's going on a kind of retreat. He will be ensnared in Heaven's gate for 15 years.

When people ask me, "Well, what kind of person joins a cult?" There's one common characteristic: it's idealism. We've spent months contacting leading experts on cults from all around the world. They say, "Remember, every one of us craves belonging, a community." A cult is a community.

but with a trap door inside. Everyone could be vulnerable if the right message comes at the right or the very wrong time in their lives. No one ever joins a cult. No one ever says, oh, I'm going to go and give up my critical thinking and...

sell my soul to someone who's obviously trying to manipulate me. They're offering clarity, they're offering a really a moral vision of the world that's very important too. In one case the person actually said, "If instead I had met a bunch of young people who are about to leave for Guatemala to build schools,

She would have abandoned her middle class life and gone off and done that. So I think part of what we have to keep in mind is that this is the extreme, but that we all have the capacity to believe in stepping out on faith. Like the faith of a little Catholic girl who wanted to be a nun, she decided to come forward after all these years. Her name, Ananda Johnson.

The snag, the carrot, was do what was done in the time of Jesus when he said to his disciples, "Leave everything behind and follow me and take this path." She was an 18-year-old college student when she walked in the door and heard a stranger offer a mystical connection to something larger than herself. When he quits being a caterpillar,

and it goes off into a chrysalis and it becomes a butterfly. I'm going to sit right here and build a cocoon and isolate myself from the world and become a new creature that can move beyond this realm. It's the first time she's told her whole story. Oh my goodness, yes. I'm trying to look at you and think, what are you really feeling?

I'm feeling a little protective of the experience. This is the first time that I have been asked, really, about the story. The story of how she disappeared into a cult for 17 years. Experts warn us all that sometimes what seems like love is a disguise for madness.

Coming up, the followers are summoned to a remote mountain in Wyoming. We find a tape unopened for 45 years, showing us the moment the classic cult tactics begin.

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For 45 years, a reel of film sat unopened in a storage facility. The can labeled "Camp Scenes," an undramatic title for the dramatic moment so many innocent people's lives are about to change. For the first time, we see them, all the hopeful young people in little chairs like a backyard barbecue. In front of them, Marshall Herff Applewhite in casual overalls next to Imbani Nettles. All those perfectionists, dreamers, idealists.

Dick Jocelyn there with his movie star hair. Ananda there in the middle looking for her mystical joy. And that valedictorian Margaret Richter with a small, rapt smile. The brother of that Star Trek heroine, Thomas Nichols, seems pensive. And here, another follower laughing, not knowing he's just taken the first step on a path to isolation, castration, and death.

led there by the two leaders filled with cracked certainties. They weren't trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. They truly believed that they were from the next level and teachers of next level ways. I think the most dangerous con artists are those who have conned themselves first.

We can see it begin with the warmth of a common purpose. To buy food and camp supplies, everyone pools their money, including the large savings of a successful businessman and a followers' trust fund. They gather around the campfire. Donna Gibbons was just 16 years old and the youngest recruit at Heaven's Gate. Hello! Hi!

The child of a volatile, broken home, she thought she was surrounded by love and stability. Everyone had kind, beautiful energy. If you took a group of people that all wanted to be the very, very, very finest, best people that they could possibly be. Next, conformity. They cut their hair to be all the same, like monks.

Their colorful individual outfits exchange for gray uniforms. Most people, if put into the right circumstance, will tend to conform. Together they participate in the daily rituals, silent meditation, every 12 minutes stop for a reflection, a kind of prayer.

I learned to show up at a single spot every 12 minutes and concentrate on being of service. You would consider yourself successful if you spoke not one word in the whole day. Slowly you drift into these ideas and as you're slowly drifting like the frog boiling in the water, you're not really aware that they're all that radical.

The leaders give them a tuning fork and say, "Go high up in the mountains and make a connection to the higher level." Sawyer, a musician, spent night after night hoping for a miracle. That was tuned to the 440 hertz, the A-tone. You would put it to your head and feel the vibration of it and try to tune into that vibration. Summer passes, then winter, then spring. No spaceship comes. All ties now cut off to their families.

Complete isolation. Those families frantic about their loved ones. He just disappeared off the map. I hired a private detective. The families are increasingly frantic about their loved ones. A mother looking for her son, Nancy Brown, starts a newsletter where families can pool their facts, arrange search parties. Terrified they are lost in a cult and it's already too late.

You can hear the anguish in an old audio tape, a daughter missing for a year. In a rare phone call, her parents are trying not to say the wrong thing as she seems to be slipping away. So what kind of group are you with? Oh, really? Uh-huh. Oh, that's nice. Gail Mader had traveled with her boyfriend to California to open a shop. The shop failed. He leaves. At a vulnerable time, she had just been through a breakup. She was alone out in California. And...

You know, they became her new family. This is a tape of that family cutting her hair. I love you so much and I miss you awfully. Don't forget how much I love you. Come up and see us. I'll buy you a ticket. Her grandmother begs. Oh no, Gary, you've got to come. I thought you'd say that. Oh, I want to see you so badly. Another plea. Oh, when you're coming home.

Coming up, the group moves into houses where the leaders intensify control. Okay, we're rolling tape. Heaven's Gate was so extreme. A total attack on individuality, humanity, sexuality. They created one of the toughest indoctrination programs I've encountered in 30-some years of doing this. It's the classic culty cult. You had a ring of power, as in Tolkien's Ring of Power, where...

there's a person that had total authority and everyone else followed. The sun goes down.

Sometimes at night, secretly, silently, packed cars pull up to new houses, often big ones. There might be 20, 30 people that would move into this house and the neighbors would be none the wiser. No, nobody knew. My guess is three-quarters of the people never set foot out the door and I was one of them. Ever. Ever. Right, and there probably wasn't even any open windows. It was like a little spaceship.

One of the most extreme cults in America is right next door. Rent has been paid in cash from the pooled money, including the money of that follower with a trust fund. Inside, the leaders are now saying they are stuck here on Earth, that the UFOs won't come until the followers are pure enough to be taken to the next level.

which means purging themselves of personal opinion. We had to have a structure, and that structure then immediately became an infringement on doing what I want to do when I want to do it. Literally everything that you do throughout the day, every day, day after day is prescribed down to the minute. You say, "Good night, this is structured."

And I love it. Wake up after a night of little sleep, no bed of your own. There was about 40 of us, and so we were divided into three shifts. Three people shared a bed. Bathe in six minutes. The bathroom, a kind of carpool lane. You'd be in the bathroom with another person. There'd be one person taking a bath. On the other side of the curtain, another person doing their minutes.

In the next level, everybody knows when you go to the bathroom. You leave the door open for a lot of awkwardness.

if the crew you're working with doesn't know everything that's going on. How you brushed your teeth, how you used the toilet, how you washed your body. They had rules about dressing, they had rules about talking, they had rules about sex, they had rules about how big to make a pancake. You know, it was rules upon rules upon rules. To purify and clean their bodies, they use enemas and fasts.

We did water fast, juice fast. What we were really testing was liberating ourselves. Regularly, the followers are called to meetings so that Doe can pass on telepathic messages received from space, from the next level of existence. More procedures and rules. With narcissistic abandon, he can go on for hours and hours. We're going to make an

an hour and a half meeting out of this 10 minutes. These two who've been sitting here this whole hour with me and haven't asked me a blooming thing. These hours and hours.

hours of digressive observations. And you think, who sits through this? - Chemistry is-- - This is right to be sustained because-- - Talking that gobbledygook for hours on end just kind of puts you in a trance. Your critical thinking has been shut down. - That study has difficulty with the vehicle that wants to go to sleep. - Thank you, some of you are pretty sleepy. I think you might not wake up if possible.

Each follower has a check partner to monitor how faithfully they follow the procedures. And at times the leaders seem impatient, the followers are not measuring up. If I wouldn't pick any of you, then nobody else would. If I don't love procedures, I am rebellious. Starting with any distrust of the leaders and their message. Again, one of the old audio tapes from meetings with followers. We shouldn't be trying to convince people to trust us.

The most egregious offense: a sexual thought of any kind. If you're from my father's kingdom, you know that Jesus was not a sexual creature.

We can buy shirts that have double pockets. You say, "Why double pockets?" Well, because it helps take the emphasis off of shape, particularly like a female vehicle. And the male in the same way, tight blue jeans, tight belt, tight shirt,

Mr. Macho, you know cowboy boots and whatever it is. If you had a wet dream you got up in the night you recorded it you checked out a washcloth you cleaned yourself up and maybe you wrote a note. Did you watch a TV program that night and focus on a figure that turned you on? Those written confessions called slippages will be discussed by the whole group who are to give you ideas on how you should control yourself. The slippages have to stop.

Do you know what I would do if I had that problem? I would say tie my hands to the side of the bed so that in a half-sleep, half-awake state, I wouldn't be able to do such a thing as that because I want to overcome.

But we don't want you to tie people's arms to the bed. No, but I mean, I would want either that or get boxing gloves. Former PhD candidates, powerful businessmen, told The Next Level wants them to be pure like children. Become like an innocent child.

Each is given a new last name. Check Odie. There's Dest Odie. The family name, Odie, which they're told, means children of God. Look at the camera. You look great. Gary St. Louis, who had been an engineer. Hi, where's your normal? There. Ah. Ha, ha, ha.

If you can infantilize someone, then you make them more dependent on you. And as if they are kindergarten children, the former music director teaches them a little song. Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra, gay your life must be.

Coming up, who are the followers who decide to break for freedom and send out a warning to the whole world about cults? As the countdown toward castration and death begins. Welcome to Beyond Human. Get in your vehicle. Nora, get in your vehicle. Alex, get in your vehicle. We'll leave these flesh bodies behind. Diane Sawyer reporting. How did you decide it was time for you to leave?

As they prepare for departure, can we finally solve the mystery of Heaven's Gate? These people who are laughing 24 or 48 hours later kill themselves with bags tied over their heads. They were tired. They had been waiting 20-some years for the damn UFO to come.

- Your only chance is to leave with us. - Bright young people looking for answers. - We're testing the microphones. This is fun. - And under extreme rules about food, sex, sleep, even their thoughts. Now, the ones who walked away and lived to tell. - If I stayed with this group, I was going to sleep. - And the single one chosen to share tapes of their final hours.

We just sat there and gasped as each one of these members said their goodbyes. They didn't have any free will. We need to treat this as a homicide scene. There were 38 murders.

and one suicide. Is there a lesson there for today? Whenever a society is in disarray, as we certainly are, that's when cults can recruit successfully. We'll see you in our next session. The followers of Heaven's Gate are in hiding, moving every few months to dozens of houses, sometimes mansions in the Southwest. 48 people sealed inside. And now there is a crisis. The large trust fund they used for rent is dwindling.

Members have to go out into the world to get jobs for money.

Panic. How do you work outside and keep the secret of who you really are? We were making up names. We'd make up social security numbers. We would never use bank accounts. We would all depart for work at certain times in certain cars, and a specific route would be taken. After work, straight back to the group. No tempting personal life. People are suddenly exposed to humans, women wearing skimpy clothes.

The obedient girl who had joined the group when she was just 16 is now a 21-year-old waitress. That's her in the picture. She's hearing the sound of her own voice again. Luckily, we did start restaurant jobs at the very end because I hadn't spoken probably in four years. She starts to have a recurrent nightmare. Everyone around her has sleeping sickness. If I stayed with this group, I was going to sleep. I made the decision to leave.

The leaders find out she's allowed to leave. They did not want anyone spreading doubt in the house. They encouraged people to leave at certain points. We want people to go forward who are committed. Over the years, followers of Heaven's Gate do leave, but in a kind of pattern like sleeper cells, so many feel called back. Those members of our class who dropped out, they couldn't deny this truth.

Once you've already alienated yourself from everyone, it becomes very hard to go back to your old community. It becomes a lot harder to do that. Experts say it takes a lot of support to stay out in the world. Returning to life does not undo the programmed identity. In a moment of stress, anxiety, some trigger can happen. And look now. You can see what's happening at the moment a former follower is going to go back.

An old home video of computer whiz Gary St. Louis, three years out in the world working on big projects. A girlfriend, Shelley King.

blue, blue eyes, happy eyes, alive. They were just always curious and inquisitive. She knows he's going back in. She grabs a camcorder. This is my Shelly haircut. Everybody looks at me and says, gosh, what happened? She beseeches him not to be lured back, but his impatience seems to mean she's already lost that fight.

You got any questions, Shelly? Is there anything I didn't cover? I know it's kind of a quickie. No, I just wanted some moving pictures of you. Excuse my mess. The whole house here is a mess. I don't know why I want this, how long I'll keep this tape, but I thought that other people might like to see you too, and that's why I wanted to do it. I begged him. If you all choose to think that I'm nuts, then so be it. That's your choice. Maybe I am.

Gary St. Louis as he was out in the world. And here, five years later. Look at the cameras. Where's your normals? There. Ah. Good. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

And we also meet someone who remembers the searing pain of being a little girl abandoned by her parents not once, but twice. In 1975, the mother who held her and sang "You Are My Sunshine" and her artist father announced to their child they'd been selected to live as space angels. And even the Bible says disciples can't bring children. Kelly is just 10 years old. They both explained that they were going to go with

this group to the next level and I could not come. What's the name of the feeling inside you at that moment? Shock and I couldn't believe that they were going to do this. I didn't understand how they thought it would be okay for me to be left behind. I really didn't. Did you ask to go with them?

Yeah, and I tried to talk them out of it several times, and they just didn't. Over the next five years, she lives with her godmother and her grandparents. But then on her 16th birthday, her parents suddenly reappear. Then after three years, they leave again. It seems they can't get Doe's voice out of their heads. They must weigh where their responsibility is. To their Heavenly Father,

or to those children. A child has to suffer for the second time. I just couldn't stop crying. And then that was it. They were gone. And now at Heaven's Gate, things will change dramatically. Change into something much darker. Bonnie Nettles diagnosed with melanoma in her eye. She had her glass eye. She always had sunglasses on. The former nurse knows she's dying. Breaks my heart to recall the experience

His old depression and confusion seemed to return. The 54-year-old man constantly in tears, and a hypochondriac sure he's dying too. He believed he was sick, all psychosomatic.

He brings Dick Joslin in to be his new aide. But the old physical yearnings arise. When I interviewed Dick Joslin, he said, "One day, Doe takes me aside and says, 'You know, I hate to say this, but you can't be my helper anymore. The problem is, my vehicle is becoming attracted to your vehicle.'"

Hard not to think of that little boy who once faced rejection. There's no sexuality, there's no sensuality. That is very distasteful to us. Again, we warn our viewers what Applewhite and his followers decide next may be difficult to hear. If your eye offend you, pluck it out. It's the same idea.

And what will the leader do now since Bunny Lou Nettles did not fly off in a cloud of light? "The worst thing that can happen for a prophecy is the future." "A UFO did not pick her up and that's when they begin to transform their ideology that it isn't about you going up in this body, it's that you may have to leave this body behind." Inside a home with the curtains drawn, young men are battling their craving for human touch and sexuality.

The conversation turns to castration. The surgery was practiced in ancient civilizations by servants who wanted to be unthreatening to the king. It's even mentioned in the Bible. A former nurse in the group thinks she knows enough to perform the surgery on her own. In a rented warehouse, Heaven's Gate hangs a little homemade sign on the door that says "Hospital."

There are different versions of how much Doe supported this experiment. We do know that the first volunteer was Stephen Terry McCarter, age 35. He even competes for the chance to do it in a coin toss. Doe comes to watch, so do other followers, including Sawyer.

and she gave him several injections that would numb the area around the testicle sac. I weakened the knees. Doe was standing right next to me. And so she snipped the cords that feed the testicles with the different fluids and sewed them back up. Suddenly, horrifyingly, there is a serious problem. And then all of a sudden, you could see that the testicle sac was getting bigger. It was like inflating.

They don't know what to do for the young man moaning in pain. Doe panics at the line he has crossed. He said, "I've taken it too far. I need to go to the police." When he said that, I was like, "We all said no way." Which was unheard of for us to say to Doe about anything. They take the agonized young follower to the hospital where he uses a fake name and is treated.

Eventually, they find doctors in Mexico who agree to do the procedure or to provide chemical castration, drugs which lower sexual hormones. At least seven followers get surgery, one of them the youngest follower, 25 years old. And so does Marshall Herff Applewhite, who said he suffered painful complications. He had some problems. They made a few mistakes.

But even before those surgeries took place, a girl who followed Applewhite to become a kind of butterfly was despairing at the darkness descending. How did you decide it was time for you to leave? I was despondent and I think it took me a couple of years to have the courage to tell myself that I'm a failure at this process.

Ananda says her fellow followers had changed. When a member broke her hip in a bike accident and had to be taken to the hospital, they reproached her. It made me so sad that she was...

made to feel so guilty for jeopardizing our security at the time. Doe changed a lot in my perception. How? That conversation had started if there were alternative ways, maybe we are needing to demonstrate that we are willing to do whatever it takes to move on to the next level. And then this whole conversation of how to deal with the sexuality and castration, I was like, okay, this is...

This is definitely my time to make a change. I remember sitting down, writing the note, and walking myself through this. You gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do this, just do it, do it, do it. Nearly 17 years after she joined, Ananda walked out the door. And Dick Jocelyn also left the cult and remembers the moment he woke up.

It still raises up. It's like a little plant breaking through concrete. The power of the individual mind to say, "I'm sorry, I just can't buy this anymore." Afterwards, he wrote a song about the real world too beautiful to ignore. You can get enough doubts there that one day that little shelf breaks. That might be a moment when they'll think, "I've got to get out of here."

"Hey, Mom. You glad to be here?" "Very." And look at the joy in this mother's face when her son, a follower of the group, walks in the door. He is allowed to visit home to let his family know he's okay and tell them they should stop looking for him.

His mother, so excited, she bakes a birthday cake for the 12 years he's been estranged from the family. Happy birthday to you. There's 12 candles for 12 birthday years. We're catching up. All right. David's youngest brother was there, Brian Moore, now a physician. In the video where we're playing those trees...

You couldn't tell if he was anything other than just a normal guy doing stuff. Job well done, fellas. But there are worrying clues. And when the family conversation turns to heaven's gate, his face signals, stay away. The family, a threat to his mission. This is what I've been waiting for. It's going to sound like something. See you later, guys. He books an untraceable route out of town. This is the last time Nancy Brown will see her son.

Ten years later, his death. And then the worst of all things, to have your son die as a parent before yourself. Coming up, Inside Heaven's Gate, the final countdown. Doe asks followers to make one more trip to see if more vulnerable people will increase their ranks for the day they die. Here we go. You ready for posters?

Heaven's Gate is recruiting again and with a new marketing idea. This time they're a kind of space crew, like Star Trek. We sometimes use an analogy of Star Trek. Nobody seems to buy it. The members out on the road feel little response, little respect.

So they decide the internet is the answer. Some of the followers are working for sophisticated online companies. One of them rummed by a man whose ad they saw on TV.

An unsuspecting Nick Matsourkas, who thought he had hired dream employees. They were intelligent, capable, warm, reliable. They, you know, had presented themselves as being part of a New Age monastery. Matsourkas had no idea 25 years ago he would soon be smack in the middle of a cult scandal. You're ready to roll.

More than 20 years. It's hard to believe that I was a part of it in any way. You know, it's kind of like an out-of-body experience. His quiet employees have been producing videos for their superstar for his comeback.

Welcome to Beyond Human. Doe, 60 years old and looking excited about his role of all-knowing space creature with worshipful followers planted in front of him. Who've been sitting here this whole hour with me and haven't asked me a blooming thing. In all, he talks on camera for 15 hours. Digressive monologues, his old hit list.

Get in your vehicle! Nora, get in your vehicle! Alex, get in your vehicle! Italian food, certain kind of wine, type of a brain food. Fruitarians. He now suggests that he is the second coming of Christ, and the outside world is a corrupt conspiracy. Lucifer, the devil, everywhere outside of Heaven's gate. The kingpin is the same old guy, Lucifer, Satan. He also says the millennium coming means the apocalypse.

We'll title this tape, Planet Earth About to be Recycled. Your only chance to evacuate is to leave with us. There were a lot of apocalyptic groups. You have not just Waco movement, but you have the Oklahoma City bombings, saying the world as we know it either is going to end or has to come to an end. The reviews online for Heaven's Gate are scathing.

But it was one click on the internet that lured in the last new followers. Yvonne Hill, a beloved postal worker, mother of five, including newborn twins. Her family says she was suffering from postpartum depression. I remember the sense of care that she had of us specifically. We were a typical American family fulfilling our life with our children.

Her husband, a factory worker who liked conspiracy sites, and says he tapped in the word "Lucifer," came up with a phone number. The group offered to help with his wife. She was suffering.

The two of them booked a flight from Ohio to California and arrived at a house out of a dream. Yvonne gets a break from the burdens of her life. We got three tennis courts. The lifestyle's are rich in flavors, you know, at its greatest. The husband, Stephen, feels there's something unnerving about the group and begs his wife to leave with him. But the new family encircles her. She gives the leader her entire life savings, $14,000.

We are not sure if she knew everything about the path on which the group has been heading. We'll leave these flesh bodies behind. Dobe said, "How would all of you feel if you could just drink some pleasant tasting liquid and lie down and go to sleep and wake up at the next level?" I think what happened is they were tired. They had been waiting 20-some years for the damn UFO to come.

At this moment, a giant comet is blazing past Earth. This is a real photo of that huge comet called Hale-Bopp. Brightest comet to come along in hundreds of years. And conspiracy radio shows keep insisting there's a UFO right behind it. They immediately took that to mean that was T, it was Bonnie Nettles, in a UFO behind the comet coming to get them.

Just as Bonnie Lou abandoned her body, they have to do the same as well. The followers research and order euthanasia drugs. They order matching Nike shoes. They sew the matching space uniforms with patches evoking Star Trek. Hold your patch. See, it says Heaven's Gate Away Team. The Pied Piper takes his followers on a pilgrimage to tell them all his stories about the places he once visited with Nettles.

And after all the years of fasting and diets, ironically, they race to the donut shop before it closes. I think I'm going to stop here because we're going to go back to the donut place. A strange bucket list: a visit to SeaWorld, in Las Vegas, Cirque du Soleil, chicken pot pie, cheesecake, spaghetti at chain restaurants. All of it documented in the group's home videos.

Back at the mansion, they canceled the garbage pickup, the lawn service. And out in the gardens, followers gather to rehearse for a big moment on camera. These tapes have not been released before. We want to see what the sound quality sounds like. And for a brief window, we think we may see glimpses of the people they once were before Heaven's Gate. Sweetly individual, self-conscious in front of the camera,

Charming, wondering if they're doing it right. I'm talking in my normal voice. This is a test, volume, lighting, shadows, focus. We're testing the microphones. This is fun. See you sometime in the future? Maybe. I don't know if that's right. Then they sign out on the daily log as they always do. But this will be the last time.

They wrote estimated time of return, ETR. Some of them wrote slashes. Some of them wrote nothing. Some wrote question marks. If you wrote bye, one wrote hasta la vista, baby. So long. A few wrote never. Coming up next, what are the secrets discovered inside that crime scene? And why does one follower of Heaven's Gate not sign out on the log? We set out to find that anonymous caller.

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A mysterious call from a payphone in suburban San Diego. Hello? Yes, I need to report an anonymous tip. This is regarding a mass suicide. I received a call, "Hey Don, I got a report that several people were found dead in a house in Rancho Santa Fe." I kind of hung up the phone afterwards and said, "Yeah, that doesn't seem real."

Rancho Santa Fe is an exclusive community within the county of San Diego, one of the wealthiest concentration of millionaires in the United States. Okay. Detective Rick Scully, scene one. Rick Scully was lead detective on the investigation. We need to treat this as a homicide scene, even though it's originally called a mass suicide. ♪

This is the audio of Detective Scully heading into the site real time. Lights are off in the home. Hey, follow me. They move in the dark with flashlights fearing the light switches have been booby trapped. It's just black. It looked like a black tunnel, a black hole. That's Scully in the yellow jacket. Inside here are two sets of bunk beds for a total of four beds and four bodies.

Investigators look for signs of coercion.

We're looking for things that might have been used to intimidate a person, to bind a person, to muffle a person's cries. Instead, they find vitamin pills in the medicine cabinet and a lot of videotapes of movies, everything from sci-fi to three copies of The Sound of Music.

There was no trash anywhere in the house, no cigarette butts or anything like that. There's no footprints. I mean, everything was just immaculate. By the side of each body, an identical bag. Mysteriously, some members have fortunes from fortune cookies, tubes of lip balm, library cards. They have coins, three quarters in case they need them from pay phones. They have IDs with their real names.

Down the hall, a computer lab with a flashing screen. Red alert, Hale-Bopp brings closure to Heaven's Gate and Graphics. Nearby, a piece of paper, a list of meticulous instructions, three groups of names. People from group two would assist people from group one. People from group three would assist people from group two. And they would consume this death cocktail.

Sedatives plus alcohol. A check mark when they swallowed them, another mark when they were confirmed dead. It's estimated their deaths happened over the course of three days. According to the document, in the first group of 16 were valedictorian Margaret Richter and mother Yvonne McCurdy Hill. Fellow followers made sure the poison would be effective by also putting plastic bags over their heads. In the second group of 14 people, former cheerleader Denise Thurman,

and David VanCenderen. The third group lists eight people. It includes Nancy Brown's son, David Moore. And what about the last big bedroom down the hall? In it, one last body. His shroud draped like a phoenix, a pillow under his knees. The master bedroom, one person on this bed. You walk in, boom, big room.

And there's actually pieces of art on the walls in this room, which was, you know, in the rest of the house, nothing. Everything was barren, stark. And I remember we walked in, we kind of like made a semi-circle around. No one said a thing. We're all looking at this guy and we're thinking, this is the guy that's responsible for all these people being dead.

Applewhite would be among the last, given the poison by two aides who made sure he died and then later swallowed the poison themselves. One of them had an unused gun in her bag. Was it just in case?

We set up a 1-800 number, and in the first 12 hours, we had almost 1,000 phone calls. Is there that many people that are in cults? The phone rang from the coroner's office in San Diego, so I knew immediately why he called. All hope was lost. Heartbroken husband Stephen Hill could not persuade his wife to leave. Most devastating part of my life.

Shelly King's hope of seeing her boyfriend, Gary St. Louis, again, now crushed. I will never forget the first time I saw the Nike sneakers and the legs coming out from underneath that purple shroud. It was like you were underwater in this fog. And as soon as I knew, I started crying. It's very sad.

So many loved ones, all grappling for some explanation in the insupportable pain. David lived his adult life doing what he wanted to do with people he loved and who loved him. And who's to say whether this was a bad life? On Larry King Live, someone famous from TV, Nichelle Nichols, talks about her brother. I respect my brother's wishes, and I respect him as a human being.

I respect him as an intelligent human being. Kelly Cook would become an orphan. Her mother died with a 39. Then six and a half weeks later, her father became one of four former members who take their own lives too. I cannot imagine

Kelly says she chose not to have children. No. I felt like there was this trail of pain that I would bring to a child somehow. I am a strong person, but there's a core of sadness in me. Some people laugh at all kinds of things, right? Because they're just, they have a core of joy, right? Not me. I don't have that. Coming up next, what can that anonymous caller tell us about the puzzle of Heaven's Gate?

Do you remember the anonymous caller? He was hiding from everyone. The information I have at this time is that he was a member for three years. He's 43 years old. 25 years ago, we went searching and found him. Tonight, the man who calls himself Rio D'Angelo finally speaks on television.

What is it you've come here to say? We weren't a crazy group of people that some people with narrow minds might call a cult. We lived like we were living in a monastery. You know, we always had freedom of choice. There was no... people call it brainwashing. His name is Rio D'Angelo. That's him in the Heaven's Gate home video. He was a follower for three years. He had come from a broken family and says Doe was like his dad. I loved these people. I loved Doe.

and it meant everything to me. But listen again to the man who said they all had freedom of choice when I ask him some simple questions about personal opinions. For instance, did he like the big mansion in San Diego? The one in Rancho Santa Fe? That's a good question. I have to think about that. I hadn't really thought about it before. What was the most fun you had together? Oh, that's a good question. Boy, I'd have to think about that.

Hmm. Can we come back to that? Because I hadn't even thought about that. He told me his mind was connected to higher thoughts. The soul is the thing I identify with. But I have a soul. Don't I have a soul? Well, I'm not sure. Do you? I do. I would hope you did. He said he had been measured for one of those spacesuits and the Nike shoes. Doe wanted him to tell their story to the world.

And that's how Rio D'Angelo received a FedEx package from Heaven's Gate containing tapes and letters and took it to his boss. Yes, his media-savvy boss, Nick Matsourkas, the owner of the Internet company. We are ready to roll. The same one we first saw reeling in front of TV cameras long ago. Nick and his employee Rio take the letters and tapes to police. There's a hush as they insert that videocassette from the FedEx package into the machine.

Doe, ever in search of getting the most publicity, explains what they're about to see. I've asked some students if they want to, to take our camera and see if they have anything they want to say on camera that they might leave behind for you to observe. We just sat there

and gasped as each one of these members said their goodbyes. The former Army paratrooper. I just want to say how thankful I am to Doe and T for helping me and taking me under their wing and all my classmates have been so great to me and all the problems I've caused. The youngest member of the group, age 25.

the oldest at 71, a mother of three. My thoughts in these last hours are only of joy and wonder. At the thought of going home. Why am I here? What is the meaning of life? Since I've been in the class, I've learned the answers to all of those. And couldn't be happier about what we're about to do.

But there's something you should know as these people praise Doe and thank him for showing them the way. On the other side of the camera, Doe, there, listening. Happiest day of my life. Once you've said something in front of somebody else, you're far less likely to renege on that, right? Do you stand up and say, oh, guess what, I changed my mind and run out of the yard? No, you don't do that.

Most of them said things that were

mimicking almost word for word what Applewhite had said. This world has become so corrupt. So corrupt. So corrupt. So it really showed the dependency on him. As long as I exist, I have free will. And I am doing this up my own free will. My own free will. I say no, they didn't have any free will. There were 38 murders and one suicide.

If he wanted to kill himself, fine. Go ahead. Marshall Applewhite, you go first. But no, he made sure they all died. Did they have real choice? No, they have what I call bounded choice. They live in this bounded reality. They live in a closed world.

Nick Metzorkas took calls from the anguished families. He tried to help. I recall, like it was yesterday, the quivering voices on the phone and how deeply it hurt them. It makes me want to cry because I think, what a waste. All of those 39 people, what a waste. This sense of betrayal is devastating to this very day. I just wish that she could have found something worth living for here. Thank you. Everyone who was there is gone. Thank you.

It ends with the fade to black. Thank you very much. It ends also with silence. When we come back, where is that anonymous caller today? We find him again. Tonight, again, a time of upheaval, a search for answers.

Whenever a society is in disarray, as we certainly are, that's when cults can recruit successfully. I think there are more groups than ever before. Really? That they're out there right now? Yes, absolutely. And every day I learn of cults I've never heard of before. In times that prove to be very taxing to the soul, whether it's a pandemic or political unrest, people are searching.

And to search, they will look in the most unlikely places. When we think about how the internet is being used by actors that are spreading this sort of disinformation, these conspiracy theories, they're very deliberate in how they're manipulating the online space.

So 25 years after Heaven's Gate, we wondered what would that anonymous caller say tonight? We found Rio D'Angelo again. He says he lives a quiet life as a retired art director. He asked to be in shadow to protect how much he's changed in these decades. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you? He still maintains the followers of Heaven's Gate had free will.

But all these years later, are T and O still in his head? I tried to raise my vibration enough to get information from them, if I could. Mostly it's just feeling. I don't get words, but mostly it's just feeling. That they're there. Yes, oddly enough. Are you still the messenger? No, I'm done with that.

He wants us to know his life has changed a lot since we first met. He's reunited with his mother. He has a granddaughter. Do you have a person in your life, a companion? Not at this moment, but I have a few times since we've met. I'm a regular guy. I'm trying to be more of myself and a better person in every way I can.

And what about the other former followers of Heaven's Gate today? Leslie Light became a therapist. Aaron Greenberg is still an adventurer. He has a grandson. I can't wait to tell him the stories, you know. And to teach him to trust his individuality.

It's something we heard from experts, too. So much of what we do to children, and I speak as a mother, is to tell them to conform and not trust themselves. Yana Gibbons teaches her daughter to celebrate her questions. Every day there's something we're called on to believe in on faith. And then you have to decide, what am I going to believe? What am I not going to believe? It's good to search. It's good to ask questions. But to be very careful who you listen to.

Ananda Johnson says, remember, you are the caretaker of your singular soul. She's married, a vegan chef and yoga teacher at a Montana retreat. It's really clear to me that one of my jobs now is to empower young women, pass on knowledge. Mostly happy days all the time.

I love my life. And that's the final lesson in the songs of the late Dick Jocelyn, who became an environmental and gay rights activist. He writes about the power in finding your community when your community celebrates human love and life. The ones who fly with healing in their wake.

Bring healing to love every nation For love can heal us all, yes it can I'm Diane Sawyer from All of Us at 2020. Good night. You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Friday nights at 9 on ABC. You can also find all new broadcast episodes of 2020. Thanks for listening.

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