ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 30, 1997 TAG: 9703310082
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN DIEGO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS and DALLAS MORNING NEWS
He hadn't seen his father since he was 5. It had been years, too, for the loved ones of many of his father's followers.
Private guards keep watch at a hilltop mansion. A son apologizes for a father he barely knew. Friends and relatives of cult members who killed themselves seem resigned to their loss.
``I am deeply hurt by the knowledge that people have now lost their lives in connection with my father,'' Mark Applewhite said. ``My sympathy and prayers go out to all those who are suffering the loss of loved ones.''
Applewhite, 40, is the son of Marshall Herff Applewhite, the Heaven's Gate cult leader who committed suicide Wednesday with 38 followers in Rancho Santa Fe.
``We're of mixed emotions,'' said Applewhite, who described himself as a born-again Christian - ``with the real ticket to heaven.''
``My father is dead - that's painful. It's sort of like we've been through a grieving process, and now we're seeking closure,'' he said.
"If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is to find the truth in the Bible and teach it to your family so that they cannot be swayed by false teaching.''
Applewhite hadn't seen his father since he was 5, when his parents divorced. It had been years, too, for the loved ones of many of his father's followers.
The University of St. Thomas in Houston, where Marshall Applewhite taught music from 1966 to 1970, denied reports Saturday that he was fired for having an affair with a male student.
``He had tremendous musical talents and was well-received by the faculty and students,'' said university President Joseph McFadden.
Frances Riddle Redman, a friend of Applewhite's mother, remembered him as ``a sweet little thing'' who had to deal with a domineering father, Presbyterian Pastor Marshall Applewhite Sr.
``He was terribly authoritative. He always had the answer in two seconds to everybody's problem,'' Redman said.
Of the boy who would become a cult leader, she said: ``I worried a lot about that child.''
Investigator Bob Engel, who has been notifying families of the deaths, said most relatives were subdued.
``They seemed resigned to it,'' Engel said. ``These families realize these people took their own lives of their own choosing.''
Autopsies continued Saturday, with bodies stored in a refrigerated truck outside the coroner's office. Most families sent funeral homes to collect bodies rather than make the trip themselves.
``We got towels, we're crying so much,'' said Eartha Hill of Cincinnati, whose daughter-in-law, Yvonne McCurdy-Hill, was among the dead at the estate rented by the Heaven's Gate cult.
By Saturday, 21 autopsies were finished. Pathologists planned to work through the weekend to finish the rest.
The family of cult member Erika Ernst showed up at the coroner's office in two campers. They refused to speak with reporters and were the only relatives to personally claim a body.
The dead were found in their beds with purple shrouds over their faces. They left behind videotapes and Web pages explaining their philosophy and reasons for suicide - to rendezvous with a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.
The cult's strongest recruiters, not surprisingly, were its founders: Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles, a onetime nurse with a passion for astrology.
Robert Rubin became involved with the group in 1975, when Applewhite and Nettles traveled to the seacoast community of Waldport, Ore., for an expected rendezvous with the spaceship to heaven.
``He was good at giving answers, but I think it was the message more than the messenger,'' said Rubin, 48, who left after several years. ``I wasn't that impressed by him, but he was good at what he did. ... He was totally into what he was talking about. And I think he believed it when I was with him.''
Periodically, Applewhite and Nettles predicted the imminent arrival of the UFO that would whisk the faithful to the ``Next Level.''
Each time, the UFO was a no-show.
Disappointed disciples drifted away after each failed prediction.
Applewhite and Nettles disappeared for extended periods, only to re-emerge with a modified philosophy - and new names for themselves and their group.
Nettles died in a Dallas hospital of cancer in 1985 - contrary to the couple's teachings that both would be killed and resurrected after three days.
Applewhite adjusted his religious tenets: Nettles, now referred to as ``Ti,'' would pilot the spaceship coming for the faithful. Suicide would be an appropriate way to join her.
Terrie Nettles said the cult in its final incarnation is different from the group her mother led.
``The only thing they discussed before my mom's death was a UFO coming to get them,'' said Nettles, 44, a production assistant in Los Angeles. ``All this talk about the suicide, the weird haircuts, that was nothing that my mom would have ever partaken in.''
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. (headshot) Bonnie Nettles. 2. ASSOCIATED PRESS. Markby CNBApplewhite talks about his father, Marshall Applewhite, outside his
Corpus Christi, Texas, home Saturday.