ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 28, 1997 TAG: 9703280079
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF.
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The 39 computer cult members apparently killed themselves in three waves - each succeeding group cleaning up after the last.
Thirty-nine members of a cult of computer programmers systematically killed themselves with drugs and vodka after packing their bags for what they thought was a rendezvous with a UFO trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.
``It seemed to be a group decision,'' Dr. Brian Blackbourne, the San Diego County medical examiner, said Thursday. ``It was very planned, sort of immaculately carried out.''
The victims were 21 women and 18 men who had driver's licenses from Minnesota, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Colorado, Ohio, Washington and California. The dead all had closely cropped hair and were wearing identical black outfits. Police said the hair - and the fact that decomposition had set in - had made their gender and age difficult to determine at first.
Most were found with little pieces of paper containing a suicide recipe: take pudding or applesauce and mix it with phenobarbital, drink it down with alcohol, lie back and relax.
The victims apparently committed suicide in separate groups: 15 the first day, 15 the second and the remaining nine the third day, each with a plastic bag over their head to hasten the deaths, Blackbourne said.
The deaths came days after the group updated their ``Heaven's Gate'' web site on the Internet with a statement saying the comet's appearance meant their time had come.
``Hale-Bopp's approach is the `marker' we've been waiting for,'' says the statement on the World Wide Web site. ``We are happily prepared to leave `this world.'''
The group also mailed out videos in which a bald man in black appears to beckon followers to leave Earth and a woman with nothing to live for says farewell. The videos went to a minister in Toledo, Ohio, and to a former cult member in Los Angeles, and excerpts were aired by CBS and ABC on Thursday.
The Federal Express package received by the former cult member, who tipped police to the mass suicide, came with a letter warning that the group would have committed suicide by the time the package arrived.
``By the time you read this, we suspect that the human bodies we were wearing have been found, and that a flurry of fragmented reports have begun to hit the wire services,'' it said.
``We'll be gone - several dozen of us. We came from the Level Above Human in distant space and we have now exited the bodies that we were wearing for our earthly task, to return to the world from whence we came - task completed,'' the letter said.
One video had an ethereal look with triple images of a bald, elderly man in a black, collar-less shirt on a white plastic patio chair. The other showed a woman with short cropped hair saying farewell, seated next to a younger man with a buzz haircut, who sat stiffly and occasionally fidgeted.
``Maybe they're crazy, for all I know, but I don't have any choice but to go for it because I've been on this planet for 31 years and there's nothing here for me,'' the woman said.
The meticulously planned deaths were described at an extraordinary news conference Thursday, held at the county fairgrounds to accommodate the crush of media. Authorities even released a video showing the bodies inside the hilltop mansion where cult members had lived for months.
Blackbourne said the second group cleaned up after the first, the third after the second. The last two alive removed plastic bags from the last seven bodies and then killed themselves.
``We believe they were the last ones and they did have plastic bags over their heads,'' Blackbourne said.
The dead ranged in age from 20 to 72, and because each had closely cropped hair, it was difficult initially to determine their sex. Most had identification packets in their shirt pockets.
One victim was Canadian, two were black, a few were Hispanic and the rest were white, he said. Authorities withheld IDs until family members were notified.
Each victim had a packed suitcase at the foot of their bed or cot, and each had a $5 bill and quarters in their pockets, Blackbourne said.
Police showed a videotape taken from inside the mansion showing bodies all dressed in black - identical Nike running shoes, long-sleeve shirts and pants - lying on neatly made bunk beds.
All had purple shrouds covering their upper bodies, and some had eyeglasses folded carefully at their sides. Computer equipment filled the nine-bedroom house.
A Beverly Hills businessman who had hired the former cult member who received the videos said Thursday that another member told him several months ago that a space ship following the comet was coming to pick then up.
``They did not say they were going to commit suicide, but they did indicate to me that they would be leaving the planet,'' Nick Matzorkis said. Matzorkis, president of Interact Entertainment Group, said he and the employee drove to the mansion Wednesday after opening the package, and called police after they discovered the bodies.
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB