Cult's Leader Preached Metamorphosis In Space -- System Of Beliefs Blended Christ, Aliens And Ufos

The religious cult that apparently believed its mass suicide would send it to heaven on a UFO got its start in Texas more than 20 years ago.

Marshall Applewhite, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was a former music professor in Houston who had attended seminary. Bonnie Nettles was a nurse and divorced mother of four.

They met in the early '70s, when Applewhite was hospitalized in Houston where he had a "near death" experience, said Applewhite's sister, Louise Winant, 69. Some sources say Nettles was his nurse in a mental hospital.

Nettles told him the near-death experience "had a purpose, that God kept him alive," Winant said. "She sort of talked him into the fact that this was the purpose - to lead these people - and he took it from there."

Together, they developed a belief system that melded Christianity, space aliens and UFOs. They also developed a following.

"Their message was that as the caterpillar changes into a butterfly, so can the human go through a metamorphosis and become a higher being capable of traveling through timeless space," said Albert Volpe, 47, a Dallas handyman, artist and musician who was a follower in the mid-1970s.

Applewhite and Nettles, then known as "Bo" and "Peep," taught that the Christmas star was the "physical manifestation of the vehicle that brought the higher being of Christ into this portion of the universe," Volpe said.

The couple also predicted that they would be killed.

"Whatever happened, they didn't want to be moved . . . because after three days, they were going to resurrect," Volpe recalled.

Their teachings in the mid-'70s contained many of the same themes that were expressed on the World Wide Web site created by some members called Heaven's Gate. The couple asserted that human souls were installed in some people by extraterrestrials - and that salvation meant returning to a spaceship that would take them to God's kingdom.

Mass suicide was also discussed on the Heaven's Gate site as an option to be considered, but not preferred.

Suicide as a pathway to heaven was contrary to the couple's teachings in the 1970s, Volpe said.

"I would have never chosen them for a mass suicide," he said. The "uplifting," he explained was supposed to involve the "entire being . . . not leaving anything behind."

University of Montana sociologist Robert Balch spent several months with the cult in 1975 and continued interviewing former members for more than a decade. He chronicled the "UFO Cult" in a chapter of the 1995 book "The Gods Have Landed: New Religions From Other Worlds."

Balch, who pretended to become one of their "sheep" to learn more about cults, said followers were forced to beg for money and to adhere to strict rules of discipline, including a ritual that required members to report to their superiors every 12 minutes.

According to Balch, the Bo and Peep of the 1970s said that only live followers could be taken up with them into the UFO. The spirits of the dead would have to wait to be reincarnated before they could achieve extraterrestrial salvation.

"In all my time with the group, they always said that the only way you could enter the kingdom was in a physical body in a spaceship," he said.

CBS reported that in an old video from 1974, Applewhite spoke of rising from the dead. At that time he was claiming he and his followers would be dead for 3 1/2 days and then, they would just get up and walk away.

Then he said he would find life after death in outer space.

Nettles died of cancer in 1985. By then, her followers knew her as "Te" and Applewhite as "Do" (pronounced "Doe"). After her death, the spelling was changed to "Ti." The Heaven's Gate Web site speaks of waiting for "Ti" and her spaceship.

"We are happily prepared to leave this world and go with Ti's crew," one passage stated.

On several occasions, the pair had predicted that followers would be boarding a spaceship for their journey to the "Next Level." In the mid-1970s, several followers in Southern California became disenchanted when their ride didn't show up.

The couple made Walter Cronkite's CBS evening newscast in 1975 when they convinced scores of followers that the spaceship would be picking them up at the seacoast community of Waldport, Ore.

Said Cronkite, they were "a group of earthlings who believe they're on their way to a rendezvous" with a rocket ship from outer space.

It didn't happen.

They called themselves "the Two" and set up house for several weeks in a Waldport motel. Soon they became known to townsfolk after they posted bulletins promising UFO salvation in the area.

"That was back in the hippie days, and that was the main bunch" that seemed to be attracted to the couple, said Everett Hockema, 71, the Lincoln County sheriff at the time.

Hockema said that "the Two" left Waldport after a few months, taking 20 to 30 townsfolk with them.

"The people who went with them were mostly young people, and not too bright," he said. "I think most of them straggled back eventually."

Over the years, some tenets of the couple's theology changed, although most core beliefs remained constant: a medley of New Age ideas, Christianity, Gnosticism and science fiction.

The names they were known by, and the name of their followers, periodically changed. Before "Heaven's Gate," there were the "Total Overcomers" and the "Human Individual Metamorphosis." To outsiders, they were sometimes known as the "UFO Cult."

Applewhite and Nettles first introduced themselves as "Guinea" and "Pig," reflecting the experimental nature of their theology. Their shift to "Bo" and "Peep" symbolized their self-image as shepherds to their followers. "Do" and "Ti" represented their roles as conductors of celestial music.

Followers produced crude pamphlets and fliers to attract converts. They took on new names. Sex, alcohol and other drugs were forbidden. And members were expected to donate and share their possessions.

The organization was haphazard and unusually low-pressure for what some experts would describe as a cult. Followers would frequently split up in pairs and then converge in a different town.

The bizarre theology and lifestyle were far removed from the lives that Applewhite and Nettles once led.

Applewhite was born in Spur, Texas, the son of a Presbyterian minister. He attended high school in Corpus Christi and studied music at the University of Colorado.

Applewhite was head of the music department at the University of St. Thomas in Houston from 1966 to 1970, university spokesman Ryan Rice confirmed.

He also led the choir at the First Unitarian Church and sang with the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Symphony.

"He was an extremely talented man" with a "wonderful voice," said Kate Rodwell, public-relations director for St. Thomas in the late 1960s and a soloist with the First Unitarian choir.

"He was charismatic, and people who knew and worked with him were really fond of him," she said.

Rodwell recalled that Applewhite was married for a time and had two children. According to Dr. Balch, sexual indiscretions threw Applewhite's career and home life into turmoil.

While Applewhite's religious background was Presbyterian, Nettles was raised Baptist. But as an adult, she developed a fascination with astrology and New Age teachings.

They later asserted that they had known each other in previous lives.

Frequently assailed by traditional religious leaders, and even by disgruntled former followers, they appeared unshaken in their own beliefs.

"I can't fault them on their own sincerity," Volpe said. "I actually believe they believed what they said."

Material from The Associated Press, The Orange County Register, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and New York Daily News is included in this report.