ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 31, 1997 TAG: 9703310105
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF.
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
But he wasn't, according to an autopsy report. His false statement that he was near death may have triggered the mass suicide.
As dawn peeked through the clouds, 300 Easter worshipers gathered in a high school stadium and praised God as the only keeper of heaven's gate.
The group gathered near the site where 39 Heaven's Gate cult members committed suicide last week, seeking redemption in a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet.
``Jesus Christ is the gate, he's the only way. There's no UFO waiting behind a comet,'' Pastor Bob Botsford told his nondenominational flock.
His sermon, ``The Key to Heaven's Gate,'' warned that the entrance was narrow - ``only one person can pass through at a time. You can't get in because you belong to some group.''
Meanwhile, CNN and Newsweek magazine reported that cult members killed themselves because leader Marshall Herff Applewhite convinced them he was dying. CNN said Applewhite told members he was dying of cancer; Newsweek reported in its April 7 issue that he said his body was ``disintegrating.''
Computer disks sent to the former cult member identified in news reports as Rio D'Angelo contain a message from an unidentified female cult member: ``Once he is gone ... there is nothing left here on the face of the Earth for me ... no reason to stay a moment longer.'' The disks were reviewed by CNN and Time.
With all of the autopsies completed, the coroner said Applewhite, 65, did not have terminal cancer.
``Marshall Applewhite has no gross physical evidence and no visual evidence of cancer in his liver or any other organs,'' Dr. Brian Blackbourne said.
The cult members had insured themselves against being abducted, impregnated or killed by aliens, an insurance agent who specializes in unusual policies said Sunday.
The cult bought a policy Oct. 10 that would pay $1 million to each member's beneficiaries, said Simon Burgess, managing director of Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson, an insurance brokerage. He told Press Association, the British news agency, that the group paid $1,000 annually.
The brokerage said it has insured 4,000 people against abduction by aliens. But ``there has never been a genuine claim for alien abduction,'' Burgess said.
Also Sunday, former cult member Nick Cooke told interviewers he wished he had joined his wife, Suzanne Sylvia Cooke, in the suicide. He had belonged to the cult ``off and on'' for 23 years and left three years ago.
``I wish I had the strength to have remained ... to have stuck it out and gotten stronger and continued to be a part of that group,'' he told ``60 Minutes'' on CBS.
``I believe they are on a craft somewhere, whether it's behind the comet or not, I really don't know,'' Cooke told San Francisco's KQED-FM.
Cooke and his wife left their daughter, Kelly, behind 20 years ago to join the cult. ``It was the toughest thing that I had to do at that point in my life,'' he told ``60 Minutes.''
``My understanding was, it was to go to the next level, to be with God,'' Kelly said.
Families of the dead cult members continued to make last arrangements for their loved ones. Many had been lost to them for years, having ended all communication after joining the group founded by Applewhite, also known as ``Do,'' and Bonnie Lu Trusdale Nettles, known as ``Ti.'' Nettles died of cancer in 1985 at age 57.
Only a handful of families have journeyed here to claim bodies, which the medical examiner began releasing to funeral homes Sunday.
LENGTH: Medium: 71 linesby CNB