NOT QUITE 39 STEPS TO THE NEXT LEVEL

archived 02-09-00
Archive file# o020900d
contributed by James Vandale

source:
http://www.forteantimes.com/artic/100/timeline.html

Heaven's Gate Timeline - FT100
NOT QUITE 39 STEPS TO THE NEXT LEVEL
Bob Rickard tabulates the life of Bo and Peep.

1931 or 1932
Marshall Herff Applewhite, born the son of an "exacting" Presbyterian clergyman. He gave up studying for the ministry for a career in music and gained a degree at the University of Colorado.

Late 1960s
Worked at St Thomas' University, Houston, where he was highly regarded as a teacher and fundraiser. Although married with two children, several homosexual liaisons lead to a divorce. He was later described as "an outwardly conventional, but talented man who concealed a troubled existence of sexual confusion, emotional trauma and spiritual crisis".

1970
Applewhite was fired over a scandal involving the daughter of a Trustee. Lost a job as a music director in a local theatre because he began hearing voices.

1972
Applewhite met psychiatric nurse Bonnie Lu Nettles in a Houston hospital. She was raised a Baptist but drifted into Theosophy and spiritualism. She introduced Applewhite to New Age mysticism. Nettles abandoned her husband and children to wander America with Applewhite.

1973
At a remote camp in Oregon, they explore their latent spirituality, calling themselves 'Brother Sun' and 'Sister Moon'. Nettles 'channels' an entity she identifies as St Francis of Assisi. Applewhite has a revelation that they are the 'Two Witnesses' mentioned in Revelation 11:3, who will be killed and then rise from the dead to ascend heavenward on a cloud.

1974
Applewhite and Nettles now named 'Guinea' and 'Pig' or 'Him' and 'Her' attract devotees and switch to 'Bo' and 'Peep'. Their heaven-bound cloud becomes a UFO. This same year, Applewhite serves four months for auto theft in St Louis for failing to return a rental car. He told authorities he was on a mission from another.

1975
Bo and Peep, as 'The Two', give their famous lectures in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Their group, called 'Human Individual Metaporphosis', draws media attention after convincing scores of followers that a spaceship will pick them up at Waldport, on the Oregon coast.

1976
The Two, fearing premature assassination, split up the group and go into hiding. Robert Balch, a University of Montana sociologist infiltrates one group with a colleague and stays for seven weeks. He reports on their highly regimented lifestyle (eg. members report to their superiors every 12 minutes). The group live in poverty in a succession of camp grounds in California, Arizona and Montana financed by begging. Three-quarters of the group defect by the time they buy several houses in Texas. They live quietly for many years as their regime becomes more rigid and authoritarian.

1982
NBC make a TV movie about Bo and Peep, called 'The Mysterious Two', starring John Forsythe.

1985
Nettles, now known as 'Ti', dies of cancer. The group believe that she left her body to prepare the way for them; that she was waiting for them to join her and would send a signal.

1990
Applewhite, now 'Do', and his small flock (down to just 24 members) begin to proselytise once more through ads in New Age magazines and occasional lectures. He declares he is the "expected Messiah" come to lead people to the "Evolutionary Level above Human". They move to New Mexico, then to Phoenix, Arizona. Nettles continues to play a part in their mythology; she is their link to "the Fathers" in the "chain of mind".

1993
27 May They signal an active phase with an ad in USA Today, entitled 'UFO Cult Resurfaces with Final Offer'. Now the 'Total Overcomers Anonymous', they hold public meetings in Madison, Santa Fe, Seattle, and San Francisco. Their message is full of paranoia about reptilians and Luciferans preventing humans from advancing to the "next level".

1995
They buy 40 acres near Manzano, New Mexico, and build a fortified community. Applewhite and five members go to Mexico to be castrated. Applewhite on internet using the handle doe@ti.lah preaches an e-mail sermon on "the laying down of the bodies".

1996
E-mails to 100 Usenet groups refer to the immanent "departure via a 'Next Level' mothership" to the "true physical Kingdom of Heaven". Nettles is virtually deified as the "Representative from the Next Evolutionary Level" who will help them "break their ties to their humanness" and shed their "containers" (bodies). The Next Level is characterised as an ethereal spacecraft, "above the Earth's surface".

14 Nov
On the Art Bell radio show, astronomer Chuck Shramek discusses the object he has observed near comet Hale-Bopp see FT96:15. Bell castigates astronomers for dismissing the sighting as a data error. Remote-viewer Courtney Brown declares it is a sphere inhabited by aliens. Applewhite decides this is the signal from Ti.

1997
Feb -Applewhite and a few followers meet Lee Shargel, a science-fiction writer, at a signing promotion for Shargel's novel Voice in the Mirror. Shargel said (on ABC TV, 30 March 1997) that Applewhite was convinced there was a message from aliens in his book.

Earlymid March
The Higher Source web site declares: "Our Older Member in the Evolutionary Level above human has made it clear to us that Hale-Bopp's approach is the 'marker' we've been waiting for," and: "We are happily prepared to leave this world and go with Ti's crew."

21 March
The Last Supper at Marie Callender's restaurant. All 39 have turkey pot pie and salad, blueberry cheesecake and iced tea. The bill comes to $351 with $52 in tips.

22 March
Thirty-nine members consume phenobarbitol, some suffocate with plastic bags. They do it in shifts, those remaining carefully arranging the dead and dying.

25 March
Richard Ford, an ex-member, receives a Fedex devivery of two videos from Applewhite.

26 March
Ford alerts the San Diego authorities and the bodies are found at 18241 Colina Norte, Rancho Santa Fe.

Sources:
Michael Wiley, 'Return of 'The Two'' in UFO Magazine 10:3 (May/June 1995) pp2635.
San Francisco Examiner 29 & 31 March 1997.
'The Cult of the Two' (e-mail document, UFO Updates 31 March 1997.
Orange County Register 3 April 1997. [AP],
Nando Times 7 April 1997. Jerome Clark.
UFO Encyclopedia, vol 3, p477480.
Robert Balch & David Taylor in The Gods have Landed (State Univ NY Press, 1995).
Newsweek 27 April

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