Cultists left families long before mass suicide

Grief subdued for many relatives

March 29, 1997
Web posted at: 8:47 p.m. EST (0147 GMT)

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Group limited outside contact
Little shock, grief observed
Families had hoped cultists would quit
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(CNN) -- Although the deaths this week of 39 cult members shocked the nation, relatives of the victims said Saturday the cultists wrote themselves out of their loved ones' lives long before they took their own.

The shock and grief most people feel when losing a family member was missing for many of those left behind.

The cult leader's 40-year-old son, Mark Applewhite of Corpus Christi, Texas, said he had not heard from his father in more than 25 years. His parents divorced when he was a child.

In a fax to CNN, the younger Applewhite offered his sympathy and prayers to "anyone hurt by the actions of Marshall Herff Applewhite."

"I must first say that I am appalled by the things that have resulted from the actions of my father and others in that cult," he wrote.

Mark Applewhite said he, his wife and two children were born-again Christians "with the real ticket to heaven" and who found consolation in the Easter message.

"At this Easter season, I am reminded of the fact that God took a terrible death of His Son Jesus on the cross and turned it into salvation for anyone who would believe," Applewhite's fax said.

"In the same way, I pray that God will take this terrible news of a mass suicide and turn it into a message of hope, the hope found only in the Bible, for all to hear."

Group limited outside contact

Heaven's Gate members were encouraged to limit contact with relatives, said Virginia Field, whose 46-year-old daughter, Margaret Richter, joined the cult in 1975, when she was 24.

"They chose to isolate them from family so we couldn't influence" them, Field said. (256K/20 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

Cult members estranged themselves from family and friends to prepare for the UFO they believed would arrive to carry them to a higher plane of existence. They killed themselves in an attempt to rendezvous with a spaceship they thought was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet, authorities said.

Fields saw her daughter only twice in the 22 years since she left her Oroville, California, home to join the group in Oregon. Fields said her daughter called her last November, and Fields asked her to come home for a New Year's Day family reunion to celebrate the parents' 50th wedding anniversary.

"But she said she was going to be out of the country, and I think they were planning this then," Field said. "She didn't want to tell us anything about what they were doing."

"For me, he died 22 years ago," Mary Ann Craig said of her ex-husband, John Craig, who left her and their six children for the cult in 1975. "When we found out he was dead, there was a sense of closure more than anything for us."

Little shock, grief observed

The medical examiner's office has notified all but a few of the 39 cult members' next of kin, helped in its effort by a toll-free hot line publicized nationwide by news media.

Bob Engel, investigator for the San Diego County Medical Examiner's office, notified many cult members' relatives and noticed little of the shock, grief or denial he usually hears at the other end of the telephone line.

"They seemed resigned to it," Engel said. "These families realize these people took their own lives of their own choosing."

Some family members -- when they did get word from their cult member relatives -- said their loved ones were not the same. Alice and Robert Maeder said they didn't know their own daughter on a videotape where she told the world good-bye.

"I didn't recognize her at first, until she opened her mouth to speak," Alice Maeder said. ".... It wasn't Gail. Gail was always smiling, upbeat. This wasn't Gail, this very passive [person] -- sitting there -- 'I'm very happy to be here.'"

Families had hoped cultists would quit

The mother blames the cult for her daughter's death.

"In no way would Gail have taken her own life if she wasn't in that state, in a brain-washed state." (192K/13 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

Still, Maeder and Field -- like many family members -- had held out hope that their loved ones would return.

"All we can rely on is that she will wake up and say, 'I've had enough,' because we've been told over and over that nine out of every 10 come out," Maeder said.

"They really thought they could get off this planet and work good for this planet," Field said. "I kept telling her, '[Margaret] you have to stay here to help people to change things.'"

Most families plan to have the bodies cremated in San Diego and have the ashes sent to them.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Extended coverage of recent mass suicides