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Heaven's Gate Survivor

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I rememeber seeing a news link on the Homepage about a Heavens Gate survivor but it changed before I had a chance to read it. Does anyone have this link by any chance?
 
Here's one link to a story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-1613756,00.html

Heaven's Gate Survivor Keeps Faith

Tuesday March 26, 2002 9:50 AM


SAN DIEGO (AP) - Rio DiAngelo walked away from the regimented life within the Heaven's Gate cult in 1997 after three years, but a message from cult members drew him back a month later to the group's rented hilltop mansion.

There, on March 26, 1997, he uncovered the worst mass suicide on U.S. soil. The 39 cult members killed themselves, believing they were shedding their earthly ``containers'' to catch a ride on a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp Comet.

Five years later, DiAngelo, or ``Neody'' as he was known in the group, still sees himself as its messenger.

``I'm really the only one left,'' the 48-year-old Los Angeles resident said.

Interviews with news organizations five years ago left DiAngelo angry at the media, but he agreed reluctantly to a phone interview with The Associated Press last week.

Little remains from the group whose androgynous-looking men and women downed a lethal concoction of pudding or applesauce spiked with vodka and barbiturates. They sealed their fate by placing plastic bags over their heads.

The group's possessions have been auctioned off. The 9,000-square-foot mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, one of San Diego's northern neighborhoods, was sold for a fraction of its value.

Now a free-lance designer who makes ergonomic items, DiAngelo is applying what he learned from Heaven's Gate to his earthly life and cashing in on it. DiAngelo is auctioning off the cult's van on eBay to mark the Tuesday anniversary of the suicide.

He is asking a minimum of $39,000 for the 1992 Ford van, which cult members once used for road trips to SeaWorld and Las Vegas.

Some victims, who ranged in age from 26 to 72, had traveled around the country with the group for decades. They included Jackie Leonard, a grandmother who was the eldest member of the group, and Thomas Nichols, 59, whose sister, Nichelle, played Lt. Uhura on TV's ``Star Trek.''

Clad in black outfits with ``Away Team'' patches and Nike tennis shoes with their trademark comet-like swoosh, each packed a small bag and carried identification, $5 and some change for their journey toward what they believed was a ``level beyond human.''

Two other cultists later followed with similar suicides.

``They weren't trying to kill themselves because of a crazy idea, although some people saw it as a crazy idea,'' DiAngelo said. ``It really is an advanced level of being.''

DiAngelo said cult leader Marshall Applewhite, 66, known as ``Do,'' was from another planet and taught DiAngelo to be more aware, honest and sensitive to the world around him: in short, a better person.

``What I've gained from this group is phenomenal,'' he said. ``If he is just a gay music teacher from Texas how he could teach all these advanced ways of being that really work?''

At the same time, DiAngelo, is not sentimental about the past.

He signed a development deal to write a TV movie based on Heaven's Gate, but the project never got off the ground. A tabloid offered him $1 million for exclusive rights to his story five years ago, but he refused, preferring to preserve the dignity of his departed friends. Today, he said he'd take the money.

His life today is far from his days in Heaven's Gate, when members watched selected TV programs in assigned seats and wrote the ``Individual Needs Department'' when they ran out of deodorant.

He has re-established contact with his 19-year-old son and earns his living working in the nation's second-biggest city, slogging his way through daily traffic jams.

``Here I am a slave to commerce like everybody else,'' he said.
 
ah.. thanks Ogopogo. That was the one I was looking for.:cool:
 
That woman in Star Trek, which one is she in? The original or a spin off?

Some time ago I was quite surprised when I realised in 96 or so I had been looking at some newsgroups, never had done that before. One of them had somethng about this religious group I found quite funny. Only years later it dawned on me it was Heaven's Gate I had been reading messages from. Those guys are all gone now.
 
Nichelle Nichols... Lt Uhura Star Trek original series

8¬)
 
I just can't remember a Lt Uhura. Is she a regular or was she a one off? And did she give any comments when it happened?
 
She was the comms officer, so a regular. Black lady....used to have to hold the ear piece in. Made TV history with the first multi-racial kiss with William Shatner. Posed for Playboy in the late 60s
8¬)
 
Is Rio still around or not?

Another article about the cult and two other members who "took the flight" after the main cult's exit:
In May, two more members attempted suicide in a motel room in Encinitas, California. One, Wayne Cooke, died; the other, Chuck Humphrey, was hospitalized and survived. In February, Humphrey tried again, using carbon monoxide and a sealed tent; this time, he died.

Humphrey, whose name in the cult was Rkkody, had a Web site at www.rkkody.com at one point that included pages entitled "The Sole Survivor of Heaven's Gate," "Return from Heaven's Gate - The Book," and "What If They're Right?"

The house where the cult lived and died was offered for sale in a sealed-bid auction. The auction was scheduled to close in December, but a Web page offering the house is still posted (http://www.callagent.com/heavensgate/). Perhaps surprisingly, the page does not downplay the house's history, but trumpets it, even showing the cult's now-familiar "keyhole" logo near the top.

In August, Humphrey and an "away team" -- a "Star Trek" term for a team dispatched to the surface of an alien planet -- gave a video presentation in Berkeley, California. The audience was courteous but skeptical. The group had merchandise available for sale, which Janja Lalich of the Cult Recovery and Resource Center said she thought was "kind of sad." It also highlighted the changing behavior of information-age cults.

"We never had Jonestown mousepads," Lalich said.
Click to expand...
 
New podcast about the Heaven;s Gate Cult.

at least four former members of the cult died by suicide in the months and years following the 1997 mass suicide.

Next month (March 26) marks the 26th anniversary of the Heaven's Gate cult mass suicide—when 39 people ingested poison in a Rancho Santa Fe Mansion, in the hopes of catching a ride on the Hale-Bopp comet.

Inspired by cult leaders Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Applewhite, the group strived to reach what they called the "Kingdom Level Above Human," and believed that by killing themselves they were releasing themselves from their physical vessels and would ascend to heaven aboard a UFO. It's a terrible story and way too reminiscent of the Jim Jones Jonestown massacre.


Whether you're familiar with the case or are just hearing about it, if you want to learn more, the podcast "Murder in America" just released a terrific episode covering it. The podcast, hosted by Courtney Browen and Colin Browen, describes the episode:

On March 26th, 1997, the largest suicide mass on US soil was unearthed in a prestigious neighborhood of San Diego, called Rancho Santa Fe, California. To the outside, it appeared to be a mass suicide, a horrible and unfortunate event. But to the 39 people inside, it was a commencement—a graduation that their leader, Marshall Herff Applewhite, had been preaching to them for years. This is the story of The Heaven's Gate Cult and you are listening to Murder in America.
Click to expand...

Even though I'm pretty familiar with this case—I lived in New Mexico when it happened, and had a friend who was doing ethnographic research for his dissertation on New Age groups in Taos who had met the group and took copious fieldnotes at some of their meetings, which he shared with me—I still learned new information from this episode, including that at least four former members of the cult died by suicide in the months and years following the 1997 mass suicide. What a terrible addendum to an already tragic event. ...

https://boingboing.net/2023/02/11/new-podcast-episode-about-heavens-gate-cult.html
 
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