Heaven's Gate Members Took Phenobarbital in Black Nikes Waiting for the Hale-Bopp Comet

Heaven's Gate started in 1974 as a partnership between Marshall Herff Applewhite, a 43-year-old former music professor in Texas, and Bonnie Lu Nettles, a 47-year-old Houston nurse with a background in theosophy. The two began traveling around the United States preaching what they described as a UFO-based gospel: human bodies were vehicles, the soul could be lifted to a higher "Next Level," and a flying saucer would arrive on cue to pick up the prepared. They called themselves "Bo and Peep," then "The Two," and finally "Do and Ti." Through the late 1970s and 1980s, they traveled with small groups of followers in itinerant communal living arrangements, requiring chastity, communal property, and gradual departure from family and prior identity.

Nettles died of cancer in 1985, which forced a theological revision: if the saucer hadn't come to take her body, the body must not be the relevant vehicle. Applewhite reframed the doctrine to allow for soul-only ascension. The group settled in Rancho Santa Fe, California, in 1996, supported themselves running a small website-development business under the name Higher Source, and spent the autumn watching the approach of the comet Hale-Bopp.

Applewhite and 38 of his followers killed themselves in coordinated waves across March 22 to 24, 1997. Sheriff's deputies found the bodies on March 26. Each of the 39 was wearing identical black trousers, a black long-sleeved shirt, brand-new black-and-white Nike Decades sneakers, and a square purple cloth folded over their head. Each had $5.75 in cash and a roll of quarters in a pocket. Each had drunk applesauce mixed with phenobarbital and vodka, then tied a plastic bag over their head. Their farewell video, posted to the Heaven's Gate website, said they were "shedding" their containers to board a vehicle traveling in Hale-Bopp's tail. The website is, eccentrically, still online.