ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 29, 1997 TAG: 9703310053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN DIEGO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Among the dead was the brother of Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Lt. Uhura on the original "Star Trek."
The Heaven's Gate suicide cult not only shunned sex, but some males in the group, including the aging leader, had been castrated in apparent pursuit of their ideal of androgynous immortality, the medical examiner revealed Friday.
Dr. Brian Blackbourne said the castrations' healed incisions indicated that the surgeries were done long before the 39 men and women methodically killed themselves in the belief that they would take a spaceship ride in a UFO trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.
Also, toxicology results showed at least two of the victims took a less-than-lethal concoction of barbiturates and alcohol, meaning that they may have been suffocated with plastic bags, he said.
The test results were available on only five of the cult members by Friday afternoon, and of those, only three had lethal levels of phenobarbital and alcohol in their systems, Blackbourne said.
Officials also released the names of the 30 dead whose relatives have been notified.
The cult members - 21 women and 18 men - apparently sedated themselves in groups, put bags over their heads and died peacefully. Their bodies were arranged in ritual fashion, arms at their sides, face and chest draped in diamond-shaped purple shrouds.
Cult members had told acquaintances that leader Marshall H. Applewhite, 66, preached celibacy, apparently as a means of denying the body as a disposable ``container.''
Both male and female members affected a unisex look: buzz-cut hair and shapeless black shirts with Mandarin collars. People who had contact with the members said they referred to themselves as monks.
``Some of the men have been castrated. Not all, but some,'' Blackbourne said.
Homicide Lt. Gerald L. Lipscomb of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department said Friday that nothing in the house indicated members exhibited any individuality. There were no books, magazines or movies other than about 100 homemade videotapes similar to the one the group made as a final goodbye.
As part of their working toward the common good of the group, each member concentrated on the task of producing Web site pages, and they did it with remarkable speed. They were instructed not to develop one-on-one relationships, and didn't share with each other their deepest, most individual thoughts.
In the house, investigators discovered pictures of an idealized, dome-headed alien that the group's writings suggest they believed represents a higher plane of existence they could attain through suicide.
``It's the head of an alien, like you see in `The X-Files,''' the medical examiner said.
The group had no other artwork or representations of human expression. No mail was found in the house.
Blackbourne refined earlier descriptions of the planned suicide. Reading from what he described as a ``little blue binder'' found at the scene, he described how the members apparently killed themselves in stages.
``Fifteen classmates, eight assistants, then 15 more and eight assistants, then help each other,'' he read.
Families of all but nine of the dead have been notified, with the help of more than 1,000 calls to a police line set up for people who think friends or family might be among the dead, Blackbourne said.
For Nancie Brown, the grieving began when her teen-age son went to check out a cult meeting at a park in the San Francisco area 21 years ago.
``It's been, I'd say, 21 years of losing,'' she told The Washington Post. In the years since, she heard from him just twice. Then came a call that the body of 41-year-old David Geoffery Moore was among 39 discovered in a mass suicide by a cult seeking a spaceship to heaven.
Nichelle Nichols, an actress who played Lt. Uhura on the original ``Star Trek,'' disclosed that she lost her brother, Thomas Nichols, in the mass suicide. The two were ``not in close touch,'' said her manager, Jim Meecham.``She did see him just a few years ago.''
Applewhite, the white-haired cult leader, likened himself to Jesus Christ but made no outright claim to be a messiah. He said Jesus also had to leave his body and identity to move on to the ``Kingdom of Heaven.''
Applewhite's sister, Louise Winant, 69, said on ABC's ``Good Morning America'' that her brother, a former college teacher, studied at a theological seminary in Richmond, Va., and went on to teach and sing in the Houston Grand Opera.
Newsday contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Marshall Applewhite, leader of Heaven's Gate cult,by CNBon tape. color. Graphic: Chart by AP. color.